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The Painted Bird

2019

Václav Marhoul

Petr Kotlar, Harvey Keitel, Barry Pepper, Julian Sands ...

6.3

614

Drama. War A young Jewish boy somewhere in Eastern Europe seeks refuge during World War II where he encounters many different characters.

	Author	Review
United States	Justin Chang Los Angeles Times	"A grueling, pristinely photographed compendium of wartime horrors"	POS
United States	Guy Lodge Variety	"A child’s-eye Holocaust drama of such unrelenting brutality as to make even the vaguest gestures of humanity (...) feel in context like miracles of grace."	POS
United States	Deborah Young The Hollywood Reporter	"An emotional three-hour punch in the stomach (...) There are moments in the black and white wasteland of devastated Eastern Europe that recall Soviet masterpieces of horror like Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev"	POS
United States	Ben Kenigsberg The New York Times	"'The Painted Bird' falls deeply in the shadow of the 1985 Soviet classic 'Come and See' (...) this adaptation often seems to have little purpose beyond literal-minded visualization."	NEU
United States	Roxana Hadadi The Playlist	"'The Painted Bird' is the kind of exploitative cinema that thinks drowning its viewers in increasingly drastic scenes of torture and brutality is inherently righteous."	NEG
United States	Robert Abele The Wrap	"Anchored by breathtaking visuals and a powerful child performance, Václav Marhoul’s three-hour film is a worthy endurance saga"	POS
	Jan Lumholdt Cineuropa	"Marhoul's audaciously arty account of a suffering World War II boy walks a constant fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous"	NEU
United Kingdom	Lee Marshall Screendaily	"War is brutal, and so, despite its good intentions, is 'The Painted Bird' (...) a film that is disturbing for all the wrong reasons"	NEG
United Kingdom	Xan Brooks The Guardian	"I can state without hesitation that this is a monumental piece of work and one I’m deeply glad to have seen. I can also say that I hope to never cross its path again (...) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of five)"	POS
United States	David Ehrlich IndieWire	"Only during the very last shot does the whole thing manage to get high enough off the ground to offer a valuable perspective."	NEU
United States	Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post	"A shocking, deeply moving allegory of war (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Glenn Kenny rogerebert.com	"It’s in trying to locate the —for lack of a better term— heart of the movie where problems emerge (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Oliver Jones The New York Observer	"If the images themselves were not so stunningly beautiful, they would be impossible to withstand (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS

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