- Critic Score
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100It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.
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100It combines a fresh and exciting style with stunning performances and that rarity in current film, a deeply humanistic story.
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100The Dardennes's masterful casting and austere style amplify this simple but powerful parable.
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100By the climax, we can hardly breathe -- The outcome is less important than our utter and complete empathy with this man. As we await what he does, we breathe with him, in and out. This is an astonishing movie.
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100The ability to conceive a compact drama on this huge subject and to embody it as perfectly as they have done, added to what they have already accomplished, puts Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne among the premier film artists of our time.
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90Makes no attempt to entertain us. Much of this extraordinarily tactful movie, like "Rosetta," is shot in close-up, focusing on the back of Olivier's neck, as if inviting us to see the world as he does.
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90The Dardennes sustain that tension through a masterful closing drive that resembles the final third of "In The Bedroom," only without the same dreadful inevitability.
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90For all its quasi-documentary materialism, The Son is ultimately a Christian allegory of one man's inchoate desire to return good for evil. The movie requires a measure of faith, and like a job well done, it repays that trust.
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90There are all sorts of ways to look at The Son -- as a philosophical thriller, as a statement of faith, as a call to political arms or just as a terrific entertainment.
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90To call The Son a masterpiece would be to insult its modesty. Like the homely, useful boxes Olivier teaches his prodigals to build, it is sturdy, durable and, in its downcast, unobtrusive way, miraculous.
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90To my knowledge there's no one anywhere making films with such a sharp sense of contemporary working-class life -- but for the Dardennes it's only the starting point of a spiritual and profoundly ethical odyssey.
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88It's a movie imbued with a fierce intimacy -- a tone and style similar to cinema verite documentary -- but it's not a banal realism, even if the characters and settings in contemporary working-class Liege initially seem mundane.
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80The results are a harrowingly intimate connection with a torn, tormented father, and an uncommonly powerful film.
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75The real star of The Son isn't lead actor Olivier Gourmet. It's the back of his neck, which the camera obsessively focuses on throughout this difficult but rewarding Belgian drama.
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75Shrewd, highly controlled little film from Belgium that builds to an unexpected emotional climax.
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70Whatever allure The Son has lies in its very remoteness, in its resolute refusal to show us all but the most delicate emotional vibrations. It also moves very sluggishly.
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70A prime piece of whirlybird filmmaking, and the technique saps what might have been a powerful experience.
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50Sitting through the film is punishing work. The jittery closeups create a response that is more physical (I'm thinking nausea) than emotional, and there are no respites.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 9
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Mixed: 0 out of 9
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Negative: 3 out of 9
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ChadS.10
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DavidT1Wow, What a bore. NOTHING Happens! cure for insomnia.
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KaterinaD.2It could have been a very good film, but it isn't as it is very empty - no emotions, neither some story to keep your mind busy.