50
It might be too slow and morbid for American viewers without an existing interest in the subject.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The decomposition of the soul is the goal of a Stasi incarceration, the promised end for an enemy of the state, and there is something about the movie’s pacing--the silences, the drone of the narration ("The name of your enemy is hope?…?")--that wears you down.
70
Darkly poetic study of psychological brutality.
70
The Decomposition of the Soul is a deliberately confining movie, but unlike "The Lives of Others," it offers no closure.
70
A thorny subject is handled with care in this meticulous reconstruction of life inside the East German police state, as boiled down to the experiences of just two ex-inmates -- one man and one woman --- of a notorious Stasi prison. Overall effect is poetically thought-provoking, not depressing.
100
Released simultaneously in the U.S. with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-nominated fictional thriller "The Lives of Others," this chilling 82-minute documentary about three souls destroyed by the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany, puts a cold, factual gloss on what might otherwise be taken for fiction.
75
There are touching interviews with a couple of former inmates...The most riveting part of The Decomposition of the Soul is their return to the prison, which was closed in 1989 and turned into a memorial to its victims.
40
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
This kind of glance at history is a poor substitute for a hard, steady and expansive examination.
75
Decomposition bears powerful, uncompromising witness to man's inhumanity to man, which is one of the most important things any documentary can do, though, it's also one of the most grueling.
80
The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann
A documentary, thoughtfully made.