83
Beanpole is slow to thaw, and its emotional impact is dulled by a structure that delays the story’s full power until the final moments, but there’s a resonant beauty to how these women seize control over their themselves.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Kantemir Balagov depicts pain in blunt terms, but he traces the aftershocks of coping and collapse with delicate subtlety.
90
Beanpole is incredibly bleak, but crafted with such care that it’s also deeply compelling. Events so disturbing that you long to look away are presented in images so striking that you cannot.
70
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
The film displays intense emotional seriousness and is finely performed and directed; but further shaping could have revealed the more focused work that’s begging to emerge.
83
In a film that is so disinterested to conforming to accustomed mainstream movie audiences taste and rhythms, and is committed to its sometimes difficult choices, the bold and exacting Beanpole sometimes feels damn-near radical.
83
Even thought it’s a bleak and uncompromising film, it’d be unfair to call Beanpole “misery porn.” The questions it’s asking are much more complicated, and more cutting, than that.
80
I wholeheartedly recommend this film as a glimpse into the effects of war on female soldiers, and also as an opportunity to see WWII from a perspective that isn’t American. It has some devastating scenes, which makes sense considering the subject matter, but it also has a faint glimpse of hope that makes the film all the more worth watching.
100
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
This is only the second feature from the sensationally talented Russian director Kantemir Balagov (who was born in 1991), and it’s a gut punch. It’s also a brilliantly told, deeply moving story about love — in all its manifestations, perversity and obstinacy.
100
Each sequence of the film springs a fresh horror and a new intrigue.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
It’s a demanding sit, a film both rigorous and indulgent, rewarding and aggravating.