Beiqing chengshi 1989

Critics score:
100 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: A City of Sadness is a great film, one that will be watched as long as there are people who care about the movies as an art. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Beautiful family saga by the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The movie conveys the director's intensely personal struggle at the crossroads of large-scale history and private memory; with understatedly bitter irony, he depicts the birth of a nation at the price of a family's dissolution. Read more

Caryn James, New York Times: It is worth the long wait for the resonance of 'A City of Sadness to emerge. Read more

Tony Rayns, Time Out: Hou turns in a masterpiece of small gestures and massive resonance; once you surrender to its spell, the obscurities vanish. Read more