The subject matter of this movie is EXTREMELY important. Unfortunately, this plays more like a fictional documentary by a dispassionate observer, moves extremely slow, lacks character development, and never provides access for the audience to feel what fundamentally motivates the characters.
In the hands of a nascent writer/director, the story was not fully and cogently developed. This is made even more dissapointing by the fact that the writer/director is the child of a psychologist -- and the essential psychological elements were repressed, undeveloped, and never explicitly expressed in the story. I can only imagine that this reflects the writer/director's own personal predicament in life -- unhealed.
Showing what happens is not nearly as engaging, emotive, and inspiring of compassion and empathy as exploring the fundamental reasons WHY it happens. Abstract causality merely conveys confusion on the part of the film maker -- perhaps reflecting his own unresolved confusion about life on the res.
