Darshan, The Embrace

TV Guide Ken Fox

Sebastien Pentecouteau's startlingly beautiful cinematography lends the film a dreamlike quality and perfectly suits Kounen's mystical subject matter.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Movies about gurus generally fail to capture the charisma of their subjects. French director Jan Kounen's documentary on Amma, India's hugging saint, who allegedly has given restorative embraces to more than 45 million supplicants, is no exception.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Jan Kounen, the maker of Darshan, is a French director with flashy credentials, including music videos, commercials, horror shorts, violent gangster movies ("Dobermann") and offbeat westerns ("Blueberry").

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Docu's pace will be a little too meditative for many, but the rigorous, sinewy lensing will have Hypnotic power on those so inclined.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Filling our heads with pretty pictures and not much else, Darshan: The Embrace is likely to leave audiences enchanted but unenlightened.

San Francisco Chronicle John McMurtrie

A loving if fawning documentary.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

According to several sojourners who speak in the film, Amma is the embodiment of love. And according to her website, it's her religion, too.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Scenes of pageantry and mass prayer show that thousands respond to her charisma, but Kounen gives little insight why; aside from Amma's belief that creator and creation are one, her religious tenets remain a mystery.

LA Weekly Tim Grierson

Unless you're already a true believer, Amma comes across in Darshan as a perfect angel, a frustrating enigma and a rather dull cinematic subject.

Los Angeles Times John Anderson

While Amma's teachings of love, inner peace and Karma, or action, resonate in the film -- obviously, Amma is a woman called to God -- her background remains pretty much a mystery. Less National Geographic and more personal history would have added a dimension to "Darshan."

New York Post V.A. Musetto

When it comes to magnetism, the Rolling Stones have nothing on Amma, the Indian mahatma ("spiritual guide") chronicled in Jan Kounen's handsomely photographed but one-sided documentary.

Village Voice Ben Kenigsberg

Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time" was, in a sense, the Buddhist equivalent of this film, as well as a more illuminating look at the power and transience of ritual.