Paradies: Glaube 2012

Critics score:
71 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Like it or not, "Paradise: Faith" sticks in your head. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: Ulrich Seidl is back on home turf in Austria with Paradise: Faith, but no less willing to challenge auds with startling imagery, ambiguous morality and ruthless black humor. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: There just isn't two hours' worth of movie here, especially considering that Seidl has previously addressed some of the same ideas in his religious documentary Jesus, You Know. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Even at his most thematically reductive, Ulrich Seidl exhibits one of the richest pictorial sensibilities in contemporary movies. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: Austrian iconoclast Ulrich Seidl delivers one of his more challenging tracts in this screwy reflection on religious devotion. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: With little room to feel for or even understand Anna Maria, "Paradise: Faith" rarely seems more than high art with low intentions. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Much like his fellow Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, Seidl knows how to keep his audience captivated while rattling us with a discomfiting precision. Read more

Tomas Hachard, NPR: A brutal, unflinching, anxiety-inducing, almost unbearably hard to watch film. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: Now, here's the trilogy's second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either. Read more

Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com: Scenes are dramatic without a hint of melodrama, so when a flash of intensity does occur, it does so out of nowhere and registers even more powerfully. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: It's hard to say if Faith works better as part of a whole instead of a triptych's single panel until the trilogy is complete, but the unconverted may find this too much of a cross to bear. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Hofstatter's performance comes off as an unselfconscious tour de force, painfully real and culturally lost. Read more