It would only
take slight changes in tone for The Color
of Time to feel like a spoof of Terrence Malick’s recent filmography,
specifically Tree of Life. This would
not be difficult, because even Malick’s own films seem ready to slip into a
parody of themselves at any moment, but The
Color of Time is completely humorless and the imitation is done with
complete sincerity. All of the twelve filmmakers credited as writer/directors
do their best to copy Malick, without a hint of irony or the ability to realize
how transparent this imitation is. They approach the material with the kind of
painful sincerity and poisonous pretensions that could only belong to a film
student, which is exactly what they are.
All twelve of
the filmmakers involved in this star-studded dud were students of NYU while
James Franco worked as an adjunct professor. Franco’s literary preoccupation
has led to several of his own pet projects, including adaptations of stories by
Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, but even these don’t come close to the
pretension of this film about the life of author C.K. Williams. Franco lends
his acting skills as the older version of the author (with Dennis Hopper’s son,
Henry, playing the younger version), and brings along a plethora of Hollywood actors to be misused. Jessica Chastain plays
the mother, with the style and content of the role far too similar to the one
she played in Tree of Life not to mention. Mila Kunis is the love interest,
playing nonsensical sequences of the couple interacting without actually saying
anything.
Much of the
dialogue is limited, with the filmmakers preferring to utilize endless
voiceover with pretentious poetry taken directly from the writer’s work. This
may as well just be a poetry reading by James Franco, with a bunch of aimless
filmmakers desperately trying to show off their abilities to copy the cinematic
style of Malick to go with it. Very little is said, even less seems to happen,
and the only relevance will come from those who enter the theaters already a
fan of C.K. Williams.
Entertainment Value:
1/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 3/10
Historical
Significance: 0/10
Special Features: 0/10
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