Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 20

  2nd film I saw at VIFF 2019.

  About as dark as a film can get. On the level of Salo in terms of non-stop sadism. Ultimately the incessant barbarism keeps me from loving this film. I don't quite buy the tagline "Light is visible only on the dark" because there's absolutely no evidence of that in this film.

  However, the craft and technical achievements of this film can not be denied. This is an epic film and props must be given to production designer Jan Vlasák, cinematographer Vladimír Smutný and the rest of the film's fantastic crew for making what I consider one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Every shot is drop dead gorgeous. Shot on anamorphic…

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★½ 10

  Much has been made of the extreme and unrelenting violence that penetrates almost every scene of Václav Marhoul’s 169-minute “The Painted Bird,” a gruesome parade of inhumanity in the grand tradition of “Come and See,” “The Tin Drum,” and “The Wrong Missy.” Following a young boy as he silently bears witness to a series of unspeakable horrors while drifting through the Slavic world at the height of World War II, this steely adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s allegorical horror novel (née memoir) of the same name opens with a warning shot to anyone who hit the wrong button on their way to rent “Palm Springs.”

  Our unnamed protagonist is introduced as he clutches a small animal — a dog that could…

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  Review by Victor ★½ 15

  I’m really sorry, Terrence Mallick.....

  I left the beautiful “A Hidden Life” to line up early for this film, due to the polarizing reviews, walkouts, and Tarr/Tarkovsky/Come and See comparisons. These things had me super hyped to see something provocative, different, technically superb and effective. But fuck......

  The Painted Bird is a pathetic film. The film focuses on a young Jewish boy during WW2 as he wanders around encountering different people and awful acts of violence and sex. The film is 169 minutes of absolute boredom, occasionally interrupted by excessive, ineffective, forced, and comical attempts at shock value. 

  The negative reviews for this film didn’t turn me off, because a lot of them were critiquing the film as “pointless shock…

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★ 2

  merry christmas lol

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★★ 3

  Despite just momentary junctures of benevolence over the films almost three hours run time, The Painted Bird is a polarising masterpiece. Written, produced and directed by Václav Marhoul, it's an adaptation of the controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which is truly epic in its magnitude. It's the first film to feature the Interslavic language and stars Petr Kotlár as a youth roaming through unidentified regions of Eastern Europe enduring a repetitive series of atrocities, with the individuals that Joska encounters along his path presented in segments.

  It's an intensely stunning excursion through actual horrors, and the film exhibits them with high vigilance and delicacy. Marhoul and cinematographer Vladimír Smutný have apprehended territories which perfectly illustrate the environments as if…

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  Review by Matt Neglia ★ 4

  ‪I’ve never seen a film so desperately want to be a part of the Criterion Collection as much as THE PAINTED BIRD. I also never want to watch this repetitive & agonizing slog ever again. Nearly 3 hours of (admittedly stunning) black & white images showing horrific violence & misery‬ with an equally horrific slow pace & lack of lightness to counteract the overwhelmingly bleak darkness that surrounds every brutal vignette. Good visuals, sure. But at what cost?

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 3

  "Come and fetch me."

  one of those times where i think to myself "yeah, i got nothing. but i guess ill try."

  my absolute favorite film of the year so far, and i don't see it being dethroned. watching this made me miss movie theaters even more, which i didn't think was possible. contains some of the most gorgeous 35mm b&w photography you're likely to see in a film, and to see this in theaters would have been mind melting (and probably a little gag inducing). if you've read any reviews of this beforehand you've probably heard how its the bleakest thing to come out of anyone's mind, ever, and while the grotesque subject matter is at an almost literal…

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  Review by Anurag Kashyap ★★★★½ 7

  Favourite Book and a very powerful film

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  Review by Two Cineasts ★★★★½

  Film reviews in 22 sentences (or less)
  Today: The Painted Bird

  Read the detailed German version here

  „A physically exhausting and psychologically shattering true form of tour-de-force and a surreal experience that hurts especially in the current world political situation, but expresses a testimony of survival in the face of every form of oppression and abuse.“
  (The Two Cineasts)

  Hi everybody, uncompromising, hopeless, brutal, dark - these 169 minutes describe an odyssey of never-ending misery in all its facets, in the center: a little nameless boy who was literally speechless... : his silence is almost always broken only by violence. Episodic in eight chapters, each named after a new acquaintance of the boy, the film brings structure to otherwise total…

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  Review by Jack ★½ 3

  The Painted Bird recounts the journey of a young Jewish boy seeking refuge during WWII as he endures much physical, emotional and sexual torture. Adapted from the harrowing book of the same name, Vaclav Marhoul delivers a faithful adaptation without any hesitation in translating the many woefully disturbing moments from the book to the screen. And it's a tough watch, not due to the consistent sadism (while that is a factor), but due to the mind-numbingly pretentious filmmaker at the helm who thinks violence as pure shock value = artfulness.

  The film is constructed in many vignettes in which the young lead character encounters miserable souls who subject him to cruelty for... no reason whatsoever. It's just 169 minutes of…

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  Review by Warp ★★★★ 8

  Intense and bizarre World War 2 film with an almost surrealistic vibe to it, it consists of several small stories that feel like a fairy tale. Beautiful black and white images, which feels very Tarr like, with lots of different war horrors passing by. The downside is the rather one-sided story and in the long run it becomes quite a summary of unpleasantness which not always leaves the desired impact. In that area it stands in the shadows of Come and See. But still an experience you won’t forget anytime soon.

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  Review by WraithApe ★★½ 7

  There's a portentous self-importance attached to The Painted Bird that rubbed me up the wrong way from the off. The mode of its introduction at LFF, with the programmer congratulating the audience on being true cineastes for choosing to come and watch it had an aura of smugness I found hard to swallow. Nevertheless, I let it pass and geared myself up for something hard-hitting and technically virtuosic and on one level, it didn't disappoint: Vladimír Smutný's cinematography is often breathtaking, shot in black and white (naturally), the framing, composition and shot choices are masterful. It's a stunning looking film.

  Both in its appearance and the epic, episodic nature of the narrative, it invites comparisons with Andrei Rublev, but that…