It can take some time to process and digest the movie but the extended stillness of its scenes will allow you ample time to contemplate. The movie plays with the user's imagination by creating room for a wide breadth of subjectivity.
For e.g., it builds an irony by first presenting the idea that conscience is a mountain in an ocean thus signifying that mental stability has to be a rock as everything else can be daunting dynamic flowing in which an unsturdy mind may lose itself. When this statement was made in the film, we see visual poetry, of the old shepherd's face's fixed reflection ebbing and flowing on the ripples of a water body by which he stood.
At the very next moment, the movie shows the old shepherd struggling to find the reward against the harsh mountainous landscape. Now when the metaphorical ocean is a mountain then what will the mind need to be? Thus not getting the reward is a reality those living in harsh mountainous regions have to live with. The other shepherds constantly maintain the refrain that those not deserving won't get what they seek thus ending up judging those living in the mountains even more harshly who are set up against an unforgiving landscape to begin with where the risk reward equation doesn't function as rosily as it may in urban centres.
The assistant to the old shepherd who had his personal delusions of discovering a gold laden sheep, and who was prone to find the old shepherd's criticism as unwarranted ends up with a near catastrophic result - unconscious and perhaps with a broken bone.
