Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

Where the film stumbles—or more accurately, never stands up at all—is in the direction. I have admittedly not seen Kamaleswar Mukherjee's first two films, and so can't speak to whether this is an issue with his filmmaking in general, or whether this is specific to the challenges of working on a larger-than-customary scale in a foreign country, but literally every aspect of the work he does in "Mountains of the Moon" fails. The compositions are dull. The scenes are flimsy and shapeless. The pacing is the direct antithesis of what normally induces the excitement of adventure. Continuing the litany would be gratuitous except to point out one recurrent peculiarity, which is that the world of "Mountains of the Moon" is one in which guns can apparently only be fired after running slowly for five minutes and then jumping, twisting backward, and firing two shots that miss by a mile. (This happens several times; it never occurs to anyone to stand, distribute their weight evenly, and aim for the center of their target.)