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Battle in Heaven
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 18 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 6 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Carlos Reygadas
Directed by: Carlos Reygadas
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 17, 2006
DVD: May 9, 2006
Running Time: 98 minutes, Color
Origin: Mexico / Belgium / France / Germany
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Marcos Hernández, Anapola Mushkadiz, Bertha Ruiz, David Bornstien, and Rosalinda Ramirez
Marcos and his wife kidnap a baby for ransom money, but it goes tragically wrong when the infant dies. In another world is Ana, the daughter of the general he drives for, who prostitutes herself for pleasure. Marcos confesses his guilt to her in his troubled search for relief. And then finds himself on his knees amidst the multitude of believers moving slowly towards the Basilica in honour of the Lady of Guadalupe. (Tartan Films)
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Promiscuously inhabiting several planes at once, Reygadas's restless inquisition may already be this year's movie to beat.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times 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.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Reyadas' radical rejection of filmmaking conventions is at first off-putting, but he's able to elicit remarkable performances from the cast of non-professionals while building tension that will hold viewers' attention. Love it or loathe it, you won't soon forget Battle in Heaven.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Some audiences will find it an endurance test and Reygadas doesn't make it easy with his confrontational imagery, but he provokes emotions not often explored on screen.
Read Full Review >TV Guide 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.
Read Full Review >The New York Times 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.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) 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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
With relentless and ruminative deliberateness, Reygadas shows us a Mexico City that seems to be decaying from the inside out.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Reygadas is clearly out to shock us, to shake us and show us a host of furious ideas about class, gender, religion, nationality, love - really, there's very little he doesn't throw into this thickly ambiguous stew. If only he hadn't made his deliberately confusing, heavily symbolic story quite so difficult to digest.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Reygadas is an undeniably important artist hewing his own path, but who is also self-consciously playing to the tastes of a tiny elite audience that craves obscurantism, confrontation and heavy-handed symbolism. Still, I really want you to see this. Then I'll have somebody to talk about it with.
Read Full Review >Variety Deborah Young
Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Michael Ferraro
There is an interesting set-up here for something great but Battle In Heaven never lives up to the expectations.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
We may indeed yawn a bit from time to time, but we know that we are yawning in the presence of a director who is intelligently disturbed by the moral inertia he sees around him and whose future is worth watching.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
This is really Reygadas' show all the way. And what he's delivered is a sad, tawdry picture in which all hope for salvation lies with God.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Proves to be a disappointing turn-off. The film deliberately works against most cinematic expectations.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly 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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly 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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jim A. gave it a0:
This movie was a complete failure. Sex scenes with no point and actors who don't even know how to play! Finally the end is not explain anything. I know the plot only because I read it somewhere!
Chad S. gave it a7:
As Marcos(Marcos Hernandez) chauffeurs Ana(Anapola Mushkadiz), the boss' daughter, who we soon learn, he covets; that dispassionate face of the general's flunkey is conspicuously framed in the rear-view mirror as he drives his client to work. Marcos appears to have other things ruminating behind his blank visage, but that rear-view mirror(also used in Brian DePalma's "Dressed to Kill") signifies the male gaze(film is largely patriarchial), and if there's a sexually active nubile in the backseat, there's desire. Daddy's little girl is a prostitute who works at an upscale whorehouse(what the Mexicans call a "boutique"). It's never made clear why this privileged girl subjects herself to the sex trade; that's just what Ana does in between the time she's a daughter and a boyfriend. "Battle in Heaven" has Catherine Breillaut's DNA all over it. This provocative film is a very good clone. The controversial woman who introduced graphic sex regularly to contemporary cinema probably wouldn't bother to explain Ana's rebellious attack on bourgeoise values either. Late in the film, there's a shocking act of violence(similar to Breillaut's "Fat Girl") which I interpreted as Marcos' anger that Ana led him into temptation. Such an idea is terribly unfair, of course, because what this implies is that a woman's body was built for sinful thoughts and men are helpless before its erotic design. Marcos makes his pilgrimage to the Basilica by inching forward on bended knees and without the benefit of sight(there's a bag covering his entire head). Since he's blind, women no longer pose a threat to his marriage vows. In the scene preceeding Ana's oral ministrations of Marcos' manhood, we see the flag of Mexico being lowered and folded away. Without the constrictions on free will that government and religion present to Marcos, he is free to prolong his sexual relationship with Ana without guilt. "Battle in Heaven" is anti-woman, but it's also rigorously intellectual.
Ricardo R. gave it a10:
One of the most interesting directors right now. Delivers a MASTERPIECE. I didn't like "Japon", but this one, Oh my god is just incredible.
Louis A. gave it a10:
An amazing film that cuts right to the heart of ideology and cultural apparati in the modern developing country.
Carlinhos B. gave it a10:
There are two options for this fill, "Hate It Or Love It", this is a very hard film to watch, if you watch the original version of course. It really is a great film, there are so many movies out there so much better than this, however none of them have the sincerity and intelligence of this sophmore masterpiece.
