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Battle in Heaven(Batalla en el cielo)

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Mexico, Belgium, France
·
2005

1h 36m

Director Carlos Reygadas
Starring Marcos Hernández, Anapola Mushkadiz, Bertha Ruiz, David Bornstein

Genre Drama

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Set in Mexico City, Carlos Reygadas's sexually explicit drama centers on a man in turmoil over his past actions. Chauffer Marcos feels compelled to reveal a dark secret to his boss's daughter, Ana, a wealthy woman who works as a prostitute just for the thrill of it. Marcos confesses that he and his wife committed a crime that ended in horrible tragedy. Haunted by his past, Marcos searches for redemption.

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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

50

Film Threat by

There is an interesting set-up here for something great but Battle In Heaven never lives up to the expectations.
60

Variety by Deborah Young

Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.
75

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Simultaneously shocking and deeply religious, Carlos Reygadas' follow-up to his acclaimed 2002 debut, "Japon," tells the story of one man's battle for spiritual redemption through a series of explicit images rarely seen by even the most jaded art-house audiences.
80

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

Reygadas asks audiences to plunge headlong into his chaotic vision of the world, no questions asked but complete trust required. Not everyone is going to be willing or able to take this leap of faith, but those who do go along with Reygadas may well feel they have come away having undergone a stunning revelatory experience.
33

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

A notorious opinion divider last year at Cannes, Battle in Heaven is less about heaven or battle, or hell on earth, or the soul of Mexico, and all too much about gawking. And so, for all the ''shock'' of the movie's clinical carnality, this battle is lost.
70

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Working again with Diego Martínez Vignatti, the cinematographer for "Japón," the director doesn't just seize our attention; he commands it - forcing us into a world of terror and beauty.
67

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Battle In Heaven is like a serious of artful photographs, except that Reygadas also moves the camera in astonishing and unusual ways, swooping around the conventional x- and y-axes while teasing the audience with what he's about to show. He's got an astonishing technique. Here's hoping that someday he'll use it to make a movie.
40

L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas

Battle in Heaven cannot be so easily dismissed - indeed, it is that rare failed film that leaves you as eager to see what its maker will do next as you were when you walked in the door.

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