In broad outline, the plot of this movie is like something out of an international Coen Brothers movie: There is a desolate village whose inhabitants run a collective farm; various of the villagers have schemes to steal “the money” (the source of the money is never specified, but it’s obviously a sort of treasury belonging to everyone) and run off. But then Irimias, a former villager who left years ago and apparently got mixed up in crime, returns to the village, and charismatically convinces the villagers to give him the money to start a new farm on an estate elsewhere that they can all move to. And they do. But it’s not clear that Irimias actually has their interests at heart — he seems to be working for a government agency, or perhaps he’s conning the government agency — and ultimately the villagers are scattered across the country to wait for some mythical day when the plan will be ready.

And the plot is compelling in its way — it actually drives some real narrative tension in the last two hours or so — but this really isn’t a movie you watch for the plot, because a) it’s not really super-resolved, and b) it’s not nearly enough to justify the seven hour running time. This is a movie that really wants to immerse you in the desolation and hopelessness of the village, so you have shot after shot of people walking on muddy roads in the rain; you have scenes of people getting completely shit-faced on fruit brandy at the run-down village pub, and dancing a sloppy tango. And you’ve got a bunch of little vignettes: The Doctor sitting in his house, drinking alone; a little girl getting scammed by her brother and taking it out on a cat.

So I’ve snarked about this a lot, because it really is super-slow and some pieces of it really are deeply unpleasant (if you can watch that cat sequence without being bothered, you should probably be on a watchlist somewhere), and of course it’s super super long. And honestly, it’s hard to recommend that anyone watch it. For all that its long shots and lack of cuts and repetitive structure are intentional aesthetic choices and do work to evoke a kind of desolation, they also demand a lot from the viewer (and the viewer’s schedule).

And yet… okay, sure, seven hours is long, but Daredevil Season 2 is ten hours, and there’s a hell of a lot more on offer here than there is there. An eight minute shot of cows wandering through a run-down village is nobody’s idea of excitement, but it’s sure as hell more interesting than another by-the-numbers ninja battle. So if I’m glad that I’m done with this (and I am), I’m nevertheless also glad that I watched it, and I certainly understand why 34 critics put this on their list of ten great movies.