Des hommes et des dieux 2010

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: Be prepared to be shaken. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Beautiful, somber and rigorously intelligent. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Beauvois never loses sight of the monks' interconnectedness-what affects one inevitably affects the others. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: A superb and austere drama in French and Arabic... Read more

Sam Adams, AV Club: In spite of its subject matter, the film has a scant feeling for spirituality, which mainly surfaces in the monks' fatalist hymns. Beauvois admires the monks' steadfastness, but doesn't seem to understand it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The air that "Of Gods and Men'' breathes is so clean and so cold that it feels like a fresh beginning. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Alternately harrowing and humbling, this is a story of ordinary men whose compassion is tested in the cruelest, most profound fashion. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: One of the most austerely beautiful movies about the monastic life that I've ever seen. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: The film, directed by Xavier Beauvois, moves back and forth between the monks doing their daily chores and the decisions they must face as a group. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Gravely serene and suffused with tenderness, Of Gods and Men takes the simple, profound stand that how a person of faith lives matters more than the circumstances of his death. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: The problem is that a whiff of saintliness envelops the Cistercian monks right from the start. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Austere yet provocative, this is not only a film about faith, it also has faith that the power generated by complex moral decisions can be as unstoppable as any runaway locomotive. Read more

David Germain, Associated Press: The monks don't speak their minds often, but when they do, the actors infuse their utterances with bottomless grace and humility yet very human dread and doubt. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The climax is both misty and unforgettable: a sacrifice that looks like a ghost story. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Beauvois channels the pace of the monks' life, which is both his film's strength and its weakness. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Just as the monks live an austere, thoughtful life, Beauvois' direction is low-key and reflective. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Beauvois' camera is watchful and unobtrusive, panning the monastery and its spartan rooms, documenting the brothers' quotidian tasks, but also the modest ritual, the beauty, the illumination. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: I found myself resisting the film's pull of easy emotion. There are fundamental questions here, and the film doesn't engage them. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Both a moving, almost abstract parable of faith and an all too real episode drawn from recent history. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: This is a beautiful film, full of gray- and white-haired men who grow in stature before our eyes. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Of Gods and Men" is a quiet, austere film that is more electrifying than a dozen action movies. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Forgive me, Father, for I was bored. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Begins and ends as a testament not to God but to brotherhood, and as a portrait not of war's violence but of love's endurance. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: [A] moving, elegantly made spiritual docudrama. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Of Gods and Men, a transcendent drama of uplift and inspiration, reveals the cavernous divide between heaven and Earth. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: The way it dramatises anxieties, expressed and unexpressed, is enthralling and quietly provocative... Read more

Jordan Mintzer, Variety: A transfixing meditation on religious conviction, post-colonial strife and the force of actors who elevate every gesture to a loftier domain. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Contemplative as it means to be, Of Gods and Men is not without generic excitement. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Beauvois takes his time limning the daily rhythms of the monastery, lingering on its most lyrical and sensuous moments, so that when violence finally reaches its gates the effect is all the more chilling. Read more