| 100 |
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Nothing momentous happens here, but Philibert has a magical sense of how to find the simple poetry lurking in the universal routine of being a kid. A lot of the film's lyricism is extracurricular.
|
| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
So superb, so graceful, so strong -- another beauty in this year of good documentaries -- that I do believe it will influence career choices, sending inspired viewers to study pedagogy, or cinematography.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Hypnotically absorbing film.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Little miracles spring up throughout this picture.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
Karen Karbo
Watching a group of kindergartners learning to crack an egg into a bowl is hardly the stuff of drama, and yet watching it, you suspect that something important is happening. And it is.
|
| 90 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
It is, simply and stirringly, a kind of beau ideal of education, a vision of how the process can work at its best.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
This heart-wrenching documentary about a French village schoolteacher at work offers the comedy and pathos of great drama and the visual magnificence of painting.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
To Be and To Have works in the grandest tradition of documentary filmmaking -- it keeps company with a small, specific place going about its business, and from it parses the whole world.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Amounts to a rare gift and an opportunity to appreciate the end of an era and celebrate one of the screen's most subtly etched heroes: the soft-spoken Monsieur Georges Lopez.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Amounts to a rare gift and an opportunity to appreciate the end of an era and celebrate one of the screen's most subtly etched heroes: the soft-spoken Monsieur Georges Lopez.
|
| 90 |
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
"You'll have to be patient." Philibert said, "That's the point." This is the film's success: its patience, which in a way mirrors the teacher's.
|
| 90 |
Variety
Lisa Nesselson
Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
One of the year's most engaging films.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Exhibiting the same sort of patience as his sensible hero, Philibert has created an extraordinarily humane portrait of a partnership between one adult and his very fortunate charges.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A deceptively simple French film about teaching that keeps enlarging as you watch it, becoming beautiful and inspiring in a way most films never touch.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Gradually and inexorably, the small crises of the children assume a poignant dramatic profluence, and the soothing patience of the teacher begins to have an almost hypnotically balming effect on the viewer.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
For better and for worse, this is seductive storytelling as well as investigative journalism, and I wasn't always sure which mode I was in.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
Part of what makes a great documentary great is the subject, and though the film never scrapes below the surface of the schoolteacher -- we never find out if he lives alone or has children of his own -- Lopez pulls as hard on the imagination as a fictional character.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
An early shot of two turtles crawling through the classroom establishes the film's deliberate pace, and To Be And To Have benefits from the care.
|
| 80 |
The New Yorker
David Denby
A deeply satisfying aesthetic and pedagogic experience--though Americans may find themselves wondering how such terrific children can grow into such irritating adults.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Full of observed life, the movie is also a bit of a vacuum, and once we register our admiration for Lopez, we can hardly help contemplating the cold equations of the students' futures, their uneducated families, and the rapturously desolate farmland around them.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
The interest of To Be and to Have, though, is not sociological: it is not really about the French educational system, rural life or even the way children learn. It is, rather, the portrait of an artist, a man whose work combines discipline and inspiration and unfolds mysteriously and imperceptibly.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The emotional honesty of this movie rescues it from sentimentality. To Be and to Have is about more than a dedicated teacher and his pupils; it’s about how difficult and exhilarating it is to grow into an adult.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
100 minutes spent watching children struggle and delight in learning is, at least in my book, 100 minutes happily spent.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Jonathan Curiel
Gets its punch from simple scenes and conversations.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Simple but deeply touching documentary.
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