Title: The Voyage of Time

Director: Terrence Malick

Narrated by Cate Blanchett

Maestro Terrence Malick chooses to create a chronicle about the complex journey of life, through Cate Blanchett’s narrating voice. The actress addresses her questions to the “Mother,” of creation. Why are we here? What are we made of? Where are we going? She voices out the queries we all have, with affable bewilderment.

The genesis of man, our planet, the universe and life itself, were ambitious themes to tackle. The legendary American director melanges beautiful images, that however do not create the expected “bouleversement.” Rather than experiencing the unfolding of our world as something mind-boggling, we get the feeling of watching some old National Geographic documentaries.

Nevertheless one must recognize that Malick’s labour of passion is an ode to those inquiries that haunt each one of us, wandering on Earth. The legendary filmmaker leads us through past, present and future, with a  phantasmagorical illustration, made significant by scientific advisors and visual effects artists captained by Dan Glass.

Malick’s aim to create a sensual cinema of science is not fully accomplished, as he explores nearly 14 billion years of our universe. Even though the sensorial experience fails, audiences are reminded about the mystery of the natural phenomena, through a pleasurable (although not new) array of celestial, terrestrial, macroscopic and microscopic alterations, that have affected mankind.

Technical: A

Story: B-

Overall: B+

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

The Voyage Of Time Movie Review (Venice Film Festival 2016)

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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