Nova Lituania

This movie starts off very strong - good actors, beautiful decors, interesting plot, events, etc. One of my friends even told me they did a great job on working on the accent of Kaunas from that time period (I read the subtitles).

Though the main plot is excellent, and would suffice for the whole movie, the director or script writers decided to add a bunch of sub-plots. Some kind of work. The main sub-plot is horrendous though, and kind of ruins the whole film. I couldn't really describe what this sub-plot is, because nether I nor my friends could really understand what it was, should represent, what was happening, etc. I can only - no spoilers - describe it as "protagonist's personal family drama". I had no idea what was going on - no idea what his relation to his niece is (were they building up something? Where does she disappear to at the end of the film?), who the hell "Antanas" is at the end of the movie, what that last apartment shot is supposed to be, etc., etc. There are tons of unintelligible hints at non-explained and non-existant backstories (and I usually love elements that I don't fully grasp), and so on. Not only useless, but kind of ruining the rest.

It would be well worth it to re-cut the film, and cut out that whole sub-plot. Just cut it all out, no regrets. Also, it's easy to tell that the director love the "over the shoulder walking behind the main character" camera shot. It becomes a little repetitive. A few of those could be cut out as well.

Other than that, the photography is beautiful.