Only when left to their own devices do the film’s stars enter the less manic, more heartfelt realm of the book.
Its inquisitiveness gives all the melodramatic incidents more of a charge and a purpose for keeping our attention.
The film is a paean to the 20th century’s moving image as well the invisible, Oz-like figure of the collector-as-curator.
The meticulousness of Haynes’s execution overburdens his work’s conceptually exhilarating sense of wonder.
It abandons its subtlety en route to becoming a moralistic screed about the preservation of the nuclear family.