Flandres 2006

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: Anything but comforting. With its depiction of bestial behavior and shocking wartime violence, it's the kind of film that polarizes viewers through the raw power of its imagery. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The harsh and lovely achievement of Bruno Dumont's Flanders is its mixture of the concrete and the abstract. It isn't about a specific war. It's about conflict of every stripe, in any time. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Dumont is much more confident when he sticks to the title town and the young woman the men left behind; his habit of alternating close shots with extreme long shots and his singularly unsentimental way of showing sex are as distinctive as ever. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: In the end, the only nagging flaw with Flanders is that [director] Dumont has more or less made this movie three times before. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This is not a film of youth or wisdom -- it's not even a film of real intelligence. And so we flit between war and relative peace, with no insight or feeling or compelling style. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: This deeply felt vision of the human condition has more resonance than yet another movie concluding that war is hell. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: The film arrives at a familiar conclusion -- that war is hell -- but the getting there is made uniquely unsettling by Dumont's relentlessly anti-psychological disposition. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: Bruno Dumont. You either love the French filmmaker's abstract and minimalist approach, or you hate it. Count me among the former. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: From the evidence of Flanders, Mr. Dumont's career demands further study on my part should the opportunity arise. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: This film has few tangible pleasures, such as some somber shots of Demester walking far away in a field. Its achievement is theoretical. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Don't fight this movie. Just release and get onto its wavelength. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Mont doesn't hate his characters; he just thinks they're stupid: no one thinks, no one learns, everyone acts. It's the most Godless film you'll see all year. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: A soul also lurks underneath the shocks. When the director turns the most overused three-word phrase into a devastating reinstatement of humanity, you're quickly reminded of why [director] Dumont was so lauded in the first place. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: A somber, beautifully acted reflection on the barbarity of war and the bestiality of man, which only enormous compassion can redeem. Read more

Nathan Lee, Village Voice: [Director Dumont's] got a decent way of moving figures toward the vanishing point of a landscape. Otherwise, ugh. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: French filmmaker Bruno Dumont urges his audience to delve beneath the movie's melodramatic, often graphic surface and experience the film sensorially rather than intellectually. Read more