At 8:33 into the so called documentary, a dreamy scene of actors walking through the woods and insufferably lasts for about 5 minutes. The movie is only 1:21:01 which means that the first reenactment scene is 6.2% of the movie. First of all, this is not a reenactment becauae how could it be?... Second, it's not the last of these unnecessary fictional scenes in the documentary. This is followed by footage of people talking about Pompeii myths/stories for the next 3.5 minutes. This means that over half of the first 16 minutes of the video is showing everything but scenes of Pompeii.
At one point there is even a group of men dressed in American football uniforms standing in the same forest scene as modern depictions of gladiators. There are also couples dancing in modern clothing in the forest.
When they are showing actual scenes of Pompeii, half the time the camera is focused on the narrator from indirect views that often show only the sky with Isabella staring into the distance away from the camera. The movie is less of a documentary and more of an interpretation of mythology and assumptions of the people who once lived in Pompeii.
It's like the director was a student of Godard but didn't get noticed by anyone of significance , so they turned to documentary film and infused endless unnecessary and distracting views/framing into the supposed documentary. I don't want to discredit the director for their attempt to make the film more interesting, but it doesn't work with the subject. I hope they have found more meaningful film work that is conducive to their personal cinematography aesthetic.
There is some worthwhile info and footage in the film, but it could've been condensed into 30 minutes. They definitely wasted money on paying Isabella to narrate this and be filmed for it. It would be just as good and potentially better with some unknown museum curator, Pompeii academic, or archaeologist narrator. But good for her. I'm sure it was fun to make and get paid to do so.
Yes, unfortunately I watched the whole thing. I am perplexed at how terrible it is. Film students should watch this as an example of what not to do: garbage.