Movies: Birth & Girl With A Pearl Earring

Here are two more movies with directors who think it's artistic and profound in the 20th century to make move movies that say little more than "life sucks." Maybe they forget we're in the 21st century now.

Girl With A Pearl Earring is showing on HBO this month. I've tried watching it a couple of times, because I love Vermeer's paintings, and many of the Dutch paintings of the 17th century. But watch Girl With A Pearl Earring and you'll find the point of view that the artists and society who created the great Classical beauty we see in the work of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and other 17th century Dutch masters were profoundly depressed, emotional zombies, evil or all of the above. This says much more about those who made the film than its supposed subjects. (And they actually had a few things to be depressed about, like plague, no social net, no central heating and no indoor plumbing, to name a few at random. But who today can paint like Rembrandt?)

Birth is the depressed materialist's take on reincarnation. It takes an hour and a half to say life sucks, and reincarnation is a hoax. It's about as insightful as an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants, without a moment of joy or insight.

Here are a few quotes from RottenTomatoes.com:

• "Interminally slow film of torpid self-indulegence based on a ludicrous premise."

• "All I could think was, What in God's name do the filmmakers think they're doing?"

• "Possibly, this idea would have worked as comedy. Say, if the kid had said something like, 'I am dead people.'"