75
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
A study of the this former mining region in both its de-industralized present and its past state as an active coalfield, The Miners' Hymns arranges its two parts as a set of binary oppositions.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
Miners' is tiresome and scattershot.
70
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
An elegant, elegiac found-footage work from Bill Morrison, best known for his silent-film reverie "Decasia."
80
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
It speaks eloquently about the disappearance of most any indigenous working-class culture.
91
In keeping with Jóhann Jóhannsson's score - alternately ominous, triumphant, and elegiac - The Miners' Hymns plays on the broader emotions of the subject. The film is all about the mysterious world down below, how camaraderie turned to conflict, and the nagging feeling of loss.
80
Morrison sometimes slows down imagery to a hypnotic, frame-by-frame trance-like state; one can imagine townsfolk scrutinizing the faces of long-dead relatives magically raised.