Your Company
 

Burning Bush(Hořící keř)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Czech Republic · 2013-2013
1 seasons · Completed
3h 51m
Creator Agnieszka Holland
Starring Tatiana Pauhofová, Jaroslava Pokorná, Petr Stach, Vojtěch Kotek
Genre Drama, War & Politics

In 1969, Jan Palach set himself on fire in Czechoslovakia to protest Soviet occupation. After his death, the communist government seeks legal retribution and a young female lawyer must defend the freedom and rights of his family, and the legacy of their son.

We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

75

Slant Magazine by

The decentralized narrative benefits from the film's original conception as a miniseries, with plenty of time to draw us into the morass that was the communist state.

90

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Ms. Holland, working from a script by Stepan Hulik, a Czech screenwriter born in 1984, turns a sprawling story into a tight and suspenseful ethical thriller.

80

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

For all the hurtling plot, and its occasional workaday scenecraft, Burning Bush proves an engrossing historical drama, low-key but in its final moments devastating.

80

The Dissolve by Jordan Hoffman

Burning Bush is a rare accomplishment. It’s a political film with clear heroes and villains, and true to its HBO roots, it works as a fleet-of-foot juicy plot-delivery system.

75

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

On the whole, though, Burning Bush is an absorbing docudrama that maintains a gratifying equilibrium between hope and cynicism. You can fight City Hall. It just takes a while.

100

RogerEbert.com by Scout Tafoya

In the end, all that can be relied upon are objects and gestures. The littlest things that tie us to each other. The film often slows to a standstill to show children playing, cars passing, people talking and streets emptied of traffic.

80

The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton

A deluxe multi-character drama that blends real history with semi-fictionalized spy thriller and soap opera elements, Burning Bush feels in places like an extended Czech remake of the Cold War-themed German Oscar-winner The Lives of Others.

Users who liked this film also liked