Ruined in the edit room

I wish all directors would realize that non-linear narratives are not intrinsically artistic, especially when they are executed so badly as it was in this movie- they can take away as easily as they can contribute. It's explicitly stated in interviews by Claire Denis and others that the script was much longer and in a linear narrative, so all of the shuffling and mangling of the story was done completely after all filming had long been done, leaving so many holes and contradictions that I could barely keep track of them all. An example is that one of Maria's flashbacks on the bus ride back to the plantation (the one showing the soldiers stationed around the daylight burning of the roasting house) consists of a scene that not only took place in the future (which would be incompetent enough), but also was a scene that Maria herself never could have witnessed. It's also clear that an entire night was removed from this cut and all of the events that took place in it were crudely pushed into another. Basically I spent the entire movie trying to mentally correct all the amateur mistakes being made just to follow it, which is a shame because there was clearly the remnants of a great film there.