Stuffed with talking heads, Harlan is overlong and redundant, but its core questions are worthy.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Rather than delving deep into its subject, the film loses focus by concentrating on the feelings of Harlan's descendants rather than a deep analysis of the man himself.
For a few years, Veit Harlan must have felt he was the right filmmaker at the right place at the right time. Did he ever stop to think that his luck also meant the doom of millions? Moeller’s documentary can’t supply an answer. It does, however, make the rest of us wonder.
Still a mystery: Harlan’s own sense of guilt. But there’s plenty to go around.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Deeply fascinating, unexpectedly potent documentary.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
Only ends up skimming the surface. But even the skimming is largely interesting and thought-provoking, and of course very bleak.
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
The viciously anti-Semitic 1940 German movie “Jew Süss” is one of the most notorious films ever made...Today it is one of the few Nazi-era films that still cannot legally be shown.
Another Harlan work, "Kolberg" (1945), inspired the film within the film in "Inglourious Basterds."