Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein

It’s a profound, affecting and beautifully told chronicle of faith, family, obsession and the language of music.

RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny

Literate, sober, soulful, and considered as it is, the movie is also a little overly scrupulous in its tastefulness.

Original-Cin by Jim Slotek

The pieces are there for a profound piece of work, and The Song of Names’ high points are worth the occasional narrative slog.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

The Song of Names is a more interesting than fascinating mystery than it is a profound statement on memory, loss, tragedy and faith — which was plainly its aim. The conflict is more talked about than keenly felt, the climax something of an over-the-top anti-climax.

The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg

There is much to admire in the fluidity of Girard’s storytelling, in the music (Ray Chen did the violin solos) and in the complicated questions raised about social obligations. Still, the movie never quite justifies the contrivance of its puzzle-box construction.

Slant Magazine

In the end, the film is unable to bridge the gap between the emotions it elicits and the messages it imparts.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Kate Taylor

Mainly, this movie chatters when it should sing.

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

What he discovers is powerfully moving, but every step of his journey — and of the copious flashbacks that fill in various blanks — tests the viewer’s patience. It’s like eating an entire box of stale cereal to get to the prize.

The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin

A somewhat claggy, uneven work with stiff performances from the leads, both of whom seem to be sleep-talking lines as if they learned them in Yiddish first.

Slant Magazine by Michael Joshua Rowin

In the end, the film is unable to bridge the gap between the emotions it elicits and the messages it imparts.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

There’s a mystery at the heart of The Song of Names, but it isn’t much of a mystery, and once it’s solved, the movie loses what little interest it has. Though not exactly a Holocaust drama, the film is one in which the Holocaust figures tangentially, but crucially. Yet the movie’s overall effect is strangely inert.

Variety by Scott Tobias

It’s a fatally old-fashioned and lugubrious historical drama, muting the emotional payoff it labors so hard to deliver.

TheWrap by Simon Abrams

There’s ultimately too much strained seriousness in The Song of Names' dramatically flimsy and symbolically heavy episodic narrative, making Girard and Caine’s already dated feel-good historical drama seem especially tacky.