Some really REALLY stunningly beautiful cinematography. The pans and ways that it uses various elements to deliver experiences of disorientation, paired with the shots that are like a living photograph are exceptionally exquisite in a way where I just want to rewatch it just to take it all in. The final shot is especially done in a way where that "every frame a painting" sense of the film really punctuates that focus.
It nails the sense of it being a period piece, and there's something about the delivery of the narrative that makes it feel like it's still a bit of an older film that's more like a fairy tale than a modern story. Something about that gives it a bit of a staccato flow where you don't really spend QUITE enough time to really get a feel for the characters and know them as much as they are just the names and vessels through which the narrative transpires. While that is a criticism of it as a whole film, the fact that the acting is SO monumentally delivered, especially in the scenes were the characters are largely isolated within their individual experiences actually interconnects into the story of sense that this is just the pages of a fairy tale brought to life where by the end, I actually felt that that somehow really worked FOR the film rather than against it.
The ending in particular made me reflect back on early symbolism we got from the brief glimpse of the Romani rituals which were especially fascinating and make everything feel more like it's just the living moments pulled from the pages of old tomes of half-understood and sparsely recorded information directly from the experiences of the characters involved, and those are the select moments brought to life in sequence. For me, that's really the main weakness of the film – but how it manages to make that feel a bit more like a strength by the end means that it doesn't knock it down for me. Despite feeling a little disconnected by that approach midway through, I liked it FAR more by the time the credits hit, which isn't a very common experience for me.
Surprisingly, I also haven't seen any of his other films, despite having an interest in them, so maybe I'll have to finally get around to that now.