At Berkeley
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At Berkeley Image
Metascore
92

Universal acclaim - based on 4 Critics What's this?

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  • Summary: Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley focuses on the University of California at Berkeley, one of the finest research and teaching facilities in the world, by showing the major aspects of university life with a particular emphasis on the administrative efforts to maintain the academic excellence, public role, as well as the economic, racial and social diversity of the student body in the face of drastic budgetary cuts imposed by the State of California. The film shows how a major American university is administered and suggests the complex relationship among its various constituencies— students, faculty, administrators, alumni, the City of Berkeley, the State of California and the federal government. In a more abstract way, the film looks closely at Berkeley’s intellectual and social mission, its obligation to the state and to larger ideas of higher education as well as illustrates how decisions are made and implemented by the administration in collaboration with its various constituencies.… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Variety
    Reviewed by: Leslie Felperin
    Sep 30, 2013
    100
    One of Wiseman’s best, a summation of sorts of a career’s worth of principled filmmaking from a director in his ninth decade.
  2. The Playlist
    Reviewed by: Oliver Lyttelton
    Sep 30, 2013
    100
    It's a state-of-the-nation masterwork, a vitally important piece of work, and should be seen by as many people as possible.
  3. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Andrew Schenker
    Sep 30, 2013
    88
    Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley isn't only a study of the contemporary American university, but, like all of the filmmaker's best documentaries, a wide-ranging inquiry into the larger institutions and contradictions that define life in the United States.
  4. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Deborah Young
    Sep 30, 2013
    80
    At times fascinating, at times not, its in-depth look at the administration, campus, students and faculty offers an insider's view into the way American academia functions.

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