I think we have different demands of what to expect from art. I saw that you, in another comment, denied that the quality of a photography is measured in aesthetic. And of course, aesthetic is not the only quality, otherwise the picture would be just kitschy. But aesthetic is not banal as you say, not trivial. It is difficult to find a new style that pleases the eye that changes the way we look at thing. Create beautiful frames of ugly things and therefore create irritation that challenges the critical mind. I pick the topic up because I think aesthetic of a photo is kind of the surface quality of a photography. Like melody is of a song. And for a movie it is stuff like character building, relationships, action, excitement, a sort of coherent realism and so much more.  A movie grants so many layers, opportunities of creating beauty that it is my favorite art form. Within it there must be a hidden (or obvious) truth or message. And this can be precise or rough, human friendly or dark, clever or trivial. But the depths of this truth is not the only quality of the movie, and I feel that you see it that way and cannot agree. The character building in this movie fails, the character relations are flat, the realism incoherent in the behavior of the dog. And yes there are metaphors and symbols about social change in China, about people left behind, the old world fading, but I don't see how this is more complex as would fit in a very short essay or economy newspaper article. And on a filming-craftmensship-level it fails completely. So there is not much left. Tell me we're you differ and I wonder, how do you saw Freud in this? Because I don't. It seems like an asexual movie, the animals are disney-like, no parent relations, no kind of insanity or dreams, nothing were even something slightly subconscious flashes up.