When it comes to exploring the man behind the art, the film’s execution feels out of step with its ambition.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Slant Magazine by Chris Barsanti
While some individuals are inevitably more compelling than others, as a whole the entire series, and “63 Up” in particular, is completely enveloping as it draws us into the latest happenings of these people we’ve followed for so long.
Cunningham is valuable as an introduction to the work of this major artist, who is sometimes seen dancing himself in archival footage, unfurling his long legs and arms and exploring the most eccentric movements without fear or physical roadblocks of any kind.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Cunningham makes good on its stated goal of doing justice to the man’s spirit of inventiveness.
There’s been nothing quite like Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, an exhilarating testament to documentaries as a boundless form of art.
Never making an obvious move, like its subject, the end result veers close to avant-garde. That’s a term that Cunningham himself famously and continually shunned; however Kovgan clearly doesn’t share the same concern.
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
What Kovgan's utterly transporting film does, through a thoughtful and dynamic combination of curated material and new performances, is radiate the rapturous power of dance.
Kovgan’s ode to choreography master Merce Cunningham is sensational in every sense of the word. Renewing one’s appreciation of the many wonders of the human body and the space in which it fills and drifts, Cunningham celebrates all the things our joints and flexed muscles are capable of, as seen through the mind and poetic dances of an iconic creator.