50
Format owes much to Short Cuts, but Haneke’s wintry vision lacks Altman’s sense of life overflowing beyond the frame.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Intellectually demanding and non-commercial film should be embraced in the festival and arthouse circuits by film students and viewers interested in postmodern, deconstructionist cinema.
60
Americans desensitized to senseless violence may find the subject matter almost banal, and the interspersed news footage of armed conflict from around the world feels like a rhetorical device. But the coldly telegraphic structure--a series of 71 blackouts following the four strangers to their deaths--yields some striking moments.
88
Chicago Tribune by John Petrakis
An eliptical puzzle that comes together beautifully in the last five minutes. Challenging, disturbing and at times brilliant. [21 Oct 1994]
70
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
An icy-cool study of violence both mediated and horribly real.
70
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
The film's Endsville, when we reach it, is almost an anticlimax, thanks to the masterfully orchestrated ensemble acting and the countless dramatic mini-explosions unleashed along the way.
83
The trilogy's conclusion, 71 Fragments, doesn't quite fit the glaciation theme, but it does show Haneke's willingness to experiment with the form and challenge the way audiences receive information. The film's radical deconstruction of various narrative strands questions the way such information is delivered and received.