Level Five

Name: Level Five
Genre: Romance, War, Documentary
Released: August 15, 2014
Duration: 106 min
Rating: 87

2014

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 8 Critic Reviews

See All

USER SCORE

No score yet

tbd

VOTE NOW

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

tbd	Your Score
tbd	User Score No score yet

Would you like to write a review?

There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. Please do not use ALL CAPS. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. Your review may be edited for content. 0/5000

Check box if your review contains spoilers

Play Sound

Please enter your birth date to watch this video:

You are not allowed to view this material at this time.

Level Five (US)

Now Playing: Level Five (US)

Movie Details & Credits

Icarus Films | Release Date: August 15, 2014 | Not Rated

Summary: Receiving its first U.S. release, Chris Marker's 1997 film, Level Five, concerns Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), a computer, and an invisible interlocutor. Laura "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa—a tragedy practically unknown in the West that impacted the way World War II ended. [Icarus Films]

Director: Chris Marker

Genre(s): Romance, War, Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 106 min

See All Details and Credits

Watch Now

Buy on

Metascore

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

100

Steve Macfarlane

Aug 12, 2014

Level Five pictorializes the cruel moment when curiosity encounters tragedy, and the all-too-human abandonment of interest that can follows. Read full review

100

Keith Uhlich

Aug 12, 2014

By using Laura as an avatar, Marker actually helps us see the visuals and their knotty meanings much more clearly. The more we watch, the more Laura softens, until — in a mind-bending conceit — her very status as a fictional creation is called into question. The effect is ecstatic. Read full review

100

Robert Abele

Aug 14, 2014

It humanely, intelligently questions the very nature of our desire to make sense of the past with the tools of the present, when the human mind remains the most aggressively obliterating battlefield of all. Read full review

The Playlist Nikola Grozdanovic

Aug 18, 2014

The theories in Level Five simultaneously thrive in realms of computer science, ethnography, and cognitive psychology, while the picture remains cloaked by the emotional weight of a historical tragedy that marked an entire nation. Read full review

A.O. Scott

Aug 14, 2014

Its themes are a bit nostalgic and some of its technology looks dated, but there is nothing else in theaters now that feels quite as new. Read full review

Adam Nayman

Aug 14, 2014

Level Five doesn’t achieve the poetic heights of Sans Soleil, but that might be because its project is more desultory; where the earlier work merely hints at the difficulty of looking at history without a filter, this sister film all but gives up the ghost. Read full review

Bill Stamets

Sep 27, 2014

Level Five (1996) is a poetic if occasionally opaque film essay on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. Read full review

SEE ALL 8 REVIEWS

User Score

Write a Review

tbd

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

User Reviews

bob13bob

Oct 14, 2014

A war documentary with French poetry and musings dubbed on top. It's a bit ridiculous. Some may like this sort of chimera, but I think it would have been much better as a straight documentary.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

SEE ALL 1 REVIEWS