The cinematography and art direction are wonderful but the movie is let down by a heavy handed and overwrought direction and screenplay style. Aspiring art movie makers tend to go weird when straightforward would work better - this is no different. I suppose the actors would be good normally but they are asked to emote too much. The Jesus-Judas motif is also not very subtle. I didnt even end up feeling empathy for the characters, which should have been easy to do given the story. Russian art movies are usually better than this - this is quite the rare failure.
Review of The Ascent
