Moffie

Paste Magazine by

The bonds formed in Moffie are complicated, and defy neat resolutions. The viewer is left with many more questions than answers. In that sense, this film is a cautionary tale, a reminder of the stakes of possibly losing our collective humanity.

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

In depicting the horrific specifics of this particular man’s awful military experience, Hermanus delivers in abundance.

The Associated Press by Jake Coyle

By burrowing within the brutal propaganda of apartheid, Hermanus, in his intensely expressive, achingly sorrowful fourth film, has captured a mean machinery at work — one that still abides, long after the end of apartheid.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

The filmmaking is strong and confident throughout, while Mr. Brummer’s performance is a constant revelation.

The A.V. Club by Lawrence Garcia

At its worst, Hermanus’ forceful direction can land with this sort of thudding literality. But befitting its harrowing subject of young men hammered into rigid conformity, Moffie leaves a lasting mark all the same.

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

Hermanus, as a Black, queer South African, isn’t about to paint Nicholas’ predicament as on a par with apartheid’s true victims. But the emotional intelligence he infuses Moffie with — all the way through its inevitable march to the front line — feels personal nonetheless, and empathetically inquisitive about the kind of masculine indoctrination that fuels oppression through rituals of violence and the criminalizing of identity.

IndieWire by Ryan Lattanzio

The way the editing (by Alain Dessauvage and George Hanmer) so gracefully unfolds from present to past suggests a kind of cinematic Proustian madeleine, conjuring how involuntary memories can be jolted again by encounters in the present.

Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis

Although Moffie is competently executed, its genre-straddling will leave you vaguely unsatisfied if you decide too quickly the kind of movie it should be.

Slant Magazine by William Repass

Oliver Hermanus’s film is a rumination on the consequences of apartheid on those who benefit from it most.