A Hidden Life
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 13, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
37
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyJan 15, 2020
The immensely empathetic view of Franz is overwhelmed by vague spirituality and vaguer politics; the impressionistic methods dispel the story’s powerful and noble specificity. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 10, 2019
Malick has created a war film without a single scene of war, of Jewish persecution, of the thought process that helped Franz hold steadfast. It’s one thing to fashion a film about one man’s blind faith; it’s another to keep audiences in the dark about the fundamentals that made him human. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 19, 2019
Malick does succeed, to some degree, on his own terms; he attempts to give some (stylised) sense of this man’s inner life: his emotional and spiritual architecture. It is admirably serious but static. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloDec 19, 2019
There’s no mystery here, no narrator wrestling with the limits of his own generosity and tolerance. Just a lot of stunning scenery and exemplary rectitude. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd May 20, 2019
Maybe Malick has committed so hard to his own principles, artistic as well as ideological, that he’s lost his grasp on drama. I’d love to see him step out of the church he’s built around his work and give us the world again, with or without a script. Read full review
40
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 20, 2019
It tells us nothing new about evil or our need to take a stand against it; it barely makes us feel what it’s like to stand against evil. All it has to offer is soft-focus piousness. Its ethical purity is inert, a dead butterfly in a jar. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 19, 2019
Unfortunately, instead of embracing the weighty moral, religious and political components of the story, Malick has alternately deflected and minimized them. Read full review
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