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100The film's ending is improbably upbeat: Magic realism, in a sense. It works as a deliverance. Dennis Foon's screenplay is based on the novel "Chanda's Secrets" by Canadian writer Allan Stratton. It is a parable with Biblical undertones, recalling "Cry, the Beloved Country."
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80Director Oliver Schmitz is particularly attentive to the superstition and ingrained sexism that make life miserable for these people, though he also seems to view women as the country's best hope.
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Aug 25, 201180Perseverance is the theme of Life, Above All, a drama that is deeply affecting, if also overwhelmingly bleak.
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80A grave and quietly moving story about a South African girl of extraordinary character, does something that few painful dramas accomplish: It tells a tale of resilience without platitudes about the triumph of the human spirit or without false promises about an unclouded future.
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80The director and his splendid cast assure that this tale about a strong little girl fighting to keep her family alive and together has both high art and a big heart, audience appeal and gut impact.
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80A tough but very rewarding watch.
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78In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.
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75Whatever the grownups say, Manyaka's Chanda is the one person in this village who understands how simple things really are, that it really does come down to Life, Above All.
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75In such a bleak story, the redemptive ending seems rushed and unconvincing, but director Oliver Schmitz has sent us a timely dispatch from a forgotten corner of the world that is honest above all.
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75To a Western audience, the movie may at times feel pat, cooked up, wishful beyond realistic measure. But we're not the ones who need to see it.
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75What matters most in this sad, sobering movie is not what anyone says; it's what goes unsaid for most of the running time.
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70It is a dark drama to be sure and it does carry with it a whiff of disease-of-the-week melodrama, yet there is also transcendence in the tale; as bleak as the film is, it is not without hope.
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70This is a modest film, and an affecting one.
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70It's an absorbing, vividly inhabited tale nonetheless, never exploiting its horrors but rather treating them as tough local realities.
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67The reason to care about Life, Above All doesn't stem from its bleeding-heart plot...The reason to care is newcomer Khomotso Manyaka, who nimbly shoulders a role that places her front and center in nearly every scene.
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Jul 14, 201167The ending, which offers a hint of relief, is unfiltered, frankly unbelievable melodrama, but something grimmer and more measured would be intolerable after everything that comes before.
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63Walks a line between didactic allegory and realistic drama.
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60Director Oliver Schmitz's rhythms take a while to ease into, and admittedly, there is never a bright moment.
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60The scenes between the young actresses are the film's most compelling: Both first-timers, Manamela and Makanyane are possessed of extraordinary faces and plain attitudes.
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60The sincere director, Oliver Schmitz, injects too much movie into his movie; life (above all) would have been enough.
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50The movie tends to lapse into soapy melodrama and heavy-handed preaching whenever possible, and the feel-good ending that appears out of nowhere essentially negates a lot of what has preceded it, adding one more moral to a movie already weighed down by life lessons.
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50A downer that too often resorts to melodrama.
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50The script groans beneath a mass of symbolic winking and declamatory exposition that has the unfortunate effect of turning the villagers into credulous simpletons, ready to blow with any wind that carries them.
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50Its schematic structure oversimplifies the drama, despite an interesting, mostly debut cast. It seems better suited for the small screen.
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40Life, Above All suggests that ignorance and stigmatization are a problem only in the village, not in the highest office of government.
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Jul 19, 201138By the time the narrative winds toward its key revelation, even the most earnest viewer is numbed and emotionally desensitized by the unfathomable bleakness already overcrowding the screen.