The Man Without a Past
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment | Release Date: April 4, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Kaurismaki is Finland's greatest filmmaker, and never has he more artfully balanced his patented blend of deadpan humor, low-key melodrama, and toe-tapping music. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderBarbara Scharres
Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki perfects his trademark formula of deadpan humor and arctic circle pathos in this brilliantly ironic 2002 comedy. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
A powerful film made with minimal means, it's a story of poor people on the fringes of society, done without sentimentality or condescension but with wicked humor. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The message, if there must be one, of this marvelous, stubbornly personal movie is that there is a spark in every soul. Read full review
90
SlateDavid Edelstein
The revered Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has hit on a way to give you grim social realism and movie-ish sentimentality in one fell swoop. Read full review
90
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Like the great films of the 1930's and early 40's, it is at once artful and unpretentious, sophisticated and completely accessible, sure of its own authority and generous toward characters and audience alike -- a movie whose intended public is the human race. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
Droll, reticent, flawlessly filmed fable of generosity. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Offers up a subversive comic sensibility, one that somehow combines Buster Keaton's deadpan stare with Frank Capra's tireless optimism and filters them both through a black-ice Finnish point of view. Welcome to Aki World. Read full review
90
VarietyDavid Rooney
Enormously satisfying, superbly crafted. Read full review
90
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Everything has a Chaplinesque feeling, from the largely silent scenes to the highly visual, tragicomic situations...But The Man Without a Past is entirely free of the tramp's cloying sentimentality. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
At the end of The Man Without a Past, I felt a deep but indefinable contentment. I'd seen a comedy that found its humor in the paradoxes of existence, in the way that things may work out strangely, but they do work out. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A dour-faced but sublime comedy about the kindness of strangers -- and about the strangeness of people who find themselves in oddball moments of grace. Read full review
88
New York PostMegan Lehmann
Brilliantly idiosyncratic. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Kaurismaki is a master at infusing his movies with apparently contradictory qualities. The best of them -- and The Man Without a Past is surely that -- are hard to describe precisely because they seem to exist, to balance precariously, in the tension between opposites. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Something in the simplicity of its vision gives The Man Without a Past a dimension of heroic grandeur -- and that effect, too, seems to tickle Kaurismaki's funny bone. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Simply enjoy its witty and expertly crafted scenes, its controlled performances, its eccentric but mostly admirable characters, its succession of bleak but cozily Nordic panoramas and its surprisingly optimistic view of the world. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Quietly asserts its eccentric romanticism with an assured, matter-of-fact blend of humor and pathos. Read full review
80
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
It's a gentle, surprising little movie whose rewards lie in what its characters don't say as much as in what they do. Read full review
80
Film ThreatRich Cline
This is a very simple story, but it builds beautifully to an endearing and witty romance. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
No weirder than Kaurismäki's previous efforts. Indeed, compared with “Leningrad Cowboys Go America,” this venture tells an alarmingly straight tale. [7 April 2003, p.96]
80
L.A. WeeklyAndrew Mann
If Aki Kaurismaki were the Eagles, which he is not, The Man Without a Past might be considered a kind of "best of" album. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The Man Without a Past is a modern fairy tale. It certainly is divorced from reality. Despite this -– or perhaps because of it -– it's a satisfying motion picture. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
A master of minimalism, Finland's Aki Kaurismaki makes films that are so dry, so delicately ironic that they seem on the verge of crumbling in front of us -- but they never do. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The Man Without a Past has the slenderness of a folk-tale -- also the clarity and charm. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
A solid delight, the sort of cinematic concoction you might expect from a time-warp collaboration between Preston Sturges and Jim Jarmusch. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
It's a quiet little gag homage both to Boris Karloff and to the set up of shelf-loads of pulp novels and films noir. And Peltola, with his flat, serious face and damp, oil-black hair, happens to look, at times, like Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
This may not be Kaurismäki's masterpiece, but it is a movie of sustained stylistic integrity -- and it has the power to make you laugh. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Warm and utterly beguiling fable. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
I suspect that, like the Coen brothers, David Lynch, and Wes Anderson -– our American masters of idiosyncrasy -– Kaurismäki has a limited appeal. Those who get him, really get him. Read full review
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