Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water is a moody picture that employs the talents of Sean Penn to keep the viewer interested. The film's biggest failure come in Bigelow's incessant use of flashbacks. The flashbacks tell the story of a murder that took place more than a hundred years ago. While the past does have relevance to the present, the frequent flashing between the two time periods becomes tedious and annoying. The real tension is taking place in the present, and flashbacks feel like speedbumps in the development of the real story.
Perhaps if the flashbacks had been handled better, it would have worked. The viewer always realizes what's going on before the characters do, therefore it becomes boring to wait through the flashback scenes so we can get back to Penn and company in the present. As such, no matter how many thematic connections can be drawn between the two different stories, the juxtaposition fails, because the tension of the first story has not been duplicated in the flashbacks.
Even so, Sean Penn is engaging to watch, and Liz Hurley is well cast as a flirty seductress. I found The Weight of Water to be very different from Bigelow's other work that I've seen, Strange Days and K*19:The Widowmaker. Fans of Penn or Hurley will no doubt be entertained enough, but all others need not apply.
Perhaps if the flashbacks had been handled better, it would have worked. The viewer always realizes what's going on before the characters do, therefore it becomes boring to wait through the flashback scenes so we can get back to Penn and company in the present. As such, no matter how many thematic connections can be drawn between the two different stories, the juxtaposition fails, because the tension of the first story has not been duplicated in the flashbacks.
Even so, Sean Penn is engaging to watch, and Liz Hurley is well cast as a flirty seductress. I found The Weight of Water to be very different from Bigelow's other work that I've seen, Strange Days and K*19:The Widowmaker. Fans of Penn or Hurley will no doubt be entertained enough, but all others need not apply.