Tired of neon mannerism—symmetry is boring—and arbitrary synth-pop cues, much as I dig the original tunes. Marsan squeakily unspooling tape throughout the long take brawl was the only time I detected a pulse.

Program notes by a S-H novice, I compiled here. A frustrated first viewing last year at MoMA gave way this time to vivid comprehension (it's dense, but subtitles help) and unexpected pleasure—i.e., Hard to Be a God's got nothing on the mud in that last scene. Pleasure bundled with mystery and also pain. A double bill with Scorsese's Silence would be borderline intolerable in practice, but also likely quite enriching: both wrestle with the gap between knowledge and media, and humanity's inability, unwillingness to close it.

Sometimes, cinephiles are just the worst.