25
Intrusive, excessively brooding and narcissistic.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
A heartfelt but eccentric, pseudo-documentary tribute to his sister Maria.
70
One worries from scene to scene about whether the movie is a work of experimental art or just another ruthless intrusion into the life of a dying and, to some degree, broken woman. I'm willing to bet that Maximilian fretted over this too, for the film is as tense and fractured, as alienating -- and, finally, touching -- a work as it undoubtedly ought to be.
70
Maximilian stresses that Maria was an icon in postwar Germany, yet the saddest thing about her isolation and disappointment is that it's so common.
63
Artful, especially in the ways it avoids sentimentality and employs vintage film clips of truly riveting performances...But Maximilian's narcissistic examination of his theatrical family -- can be boring, and his creative license with the truth is kind of troubling.
80
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Brave, heartless, and exceedingly strange, a quasi-documentary in which the actor Maximilian Schell mercilessly violates the privacy of his older sister, Maria.
20
Deeply personal and deeply silly.
50
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
In many ways this is an extraordinary movie: there's probably never been such a portrait of a major star in the grip of old age.