Heart of a Dog
Abramorama | Release Date: October 21, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 12, 2015
It sounds sentimental, icky, even, but Heart of a Dog sparkles with its creator's wisdom and droll philosophical insight. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonNov 12, 2015
One of the best films of the year. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleNov 5, 2015
Heart of a Dog is that rarest of pieces, an unabashedly experimental work that's as inviting as a visit with an old friend, one who may not always make sense, who's sometimes goofy, but has been through a lot lately and treasures the opportunity to artfully unload. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 21, 2015
Anderson says that as a child she dreamed of making something that had never been made before, and, with the help of some gifted artists and editors and camera-people, she has done it again — with bells on. The only thing that would make it more pleasurable would be Anderson narrating it in person. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnSep 16, 2015
Haunting and celebratory at once, Heart of a Dog ultimately amounts to a contemplation of mortality. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 23, 2015
Anderson works in animation and home movies (Lolabelle “playing” the piano is a wonder), and Anderson’s voice-over narration is closer in quality to song than to spoken word. It’s a confounding, transfixing mélange. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 29, 2015
It’s film as a fugue state, a Buddhist flow, a collection of memory fragments that drift together into a haunting evocation of Lola’s and Laurie’s intertwined lives. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 20, 2015
Heart of a Dog is about telling and remembering and forgetting, and how we put together the fragments that make up our lives — their flotsam and jetsam, highs and lows, meaningful and slight details, shrieking and weeping headline news. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 12, 2015
Ghosts haunt Heart of a Dog - but so, too, does love. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)James AdamsOct 29, 2015
The wide swerve of Anderson’s associations, their “hypnotic splattered mist,” don’t make for an easy film. But it is a very good one and only the hardest heart will leave the theatre unmoved. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineClayton DillardOct 19, 2015
Laurie Anderson condenses contemporary, human experience to the point where exterior and interior are made indistinguishable from one another. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOct 21, 2015
Given the number of films nowadays that would be just as enjoyable with both sound and picture turned off, a superlative soundtrack is nothing to sneeze at. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 20, 2015
In combining video, surveillance footage and her own 8mm family memories, Heart of a Dog quickly accesses a realm of ideas that vault it far higher than mere sentiment would allow. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangSep 16, 2015
While this alternately goofy, serious, lyrical and beguiling cine-essay serves primarily as a loving tribute to the memory of Anderson’s rat terrier, Lolabelle, its roving, free-associative structure brings together all manner of richly eccentric musings on the evasions of memory, the limitations of language and storytelling, the strangeness of life in a post-9/11 surveillance state, and the difficulty and necessity of coming to terms with death. Read full review
75
Washington PostPat PaduaNov 19, 2015
Weaving together stories of death with observations on the post-9/11 culture of surveillance, Heart of a Dog hints that the very language on which Anderson has built her career as a performance artist is finally inadequate in the face of mortality. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoOct 22, 2015
There are times when Anderson’s Buddhist leanings can be a bit overwhelming, and the piece ends a bit too abruptly for my tastes, although that almost seems thematically appropriate. Read full review
67
The PlaylistGary GarrisonSep 16, 2015
Heart Of A Dog is at turns a haunting, hilarious, muddled, disparate, and deeply emotional film about a woman, her dog, their bond, and the deaths that continue that haunt her. Read full review
60
Village VoiceNick SchagerOct 20, 2015
Her documentary sporadically locates profound truth amid its myriad musings about the momentous and the everyday. Often, however, Anderson's hushed-tone articulations of her thoughts on these subjects prove affected, and her stream-of-consciousness style, though acutely constructed, is more alienating than inviting. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 16, 2015
From a sensory point of view, the film is a pleasure, the images having been manipulated in various ways to evocative effect, Anderson’s voiceovers proving more amusing than not, and the music taking mostly lively turns. Read full review
40
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 16, 2015
Some of it is funny. Some of it is moving. More of it is plain dull. Read full review
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