White Material
IFC Films | Release Date: November 19, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
81
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 14, 2010
Ms. Denis has an extraordinary gift for finding the perfect image that expresses her ideas, the cinematic equivalent of what Flaubert called le mot juste.
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 14, 2010
It's a portrait, by turns chilling, thrilling, mysterious and terrifying, of a woman who refuses to be terrorized. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 9, 2010
While White Material is very much the story of this one woman, it is also a story of postcolonial Africa, a place where Europeans staked their claim, and where disorder and destruction upended everything. A mournful, frightening, powerful film. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianStan HallDec 16, 2010
The result is somewhat elliptical but also thoroughly engrossing and propulsive. Compared to Denis' earlier work, it's practically an action movie. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumDec 14, 2010
French mood-and-feeling master filmmaker Claire Denis returns to the Africa of her youth for an intense, mysterious drama exploring revolution and loss. Read full review
90
VarietyJay WeissbergDec 14, 2010
Structurally, White Material unfolds like a novel, undoubtedly partly due to the work of Denis' co-scripter, author Marie N'Diaye. That said, it's still very much a Denis film, not just in the complexity of the characters and their motivations -- Huppert shoulders the narrative effortlessly, her strength and direction unwavering -- but in the framework and editing. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 14, 2010
Claire Denis's strongest movie in the decade since "Beau Travail," her tense, convulsive White Material is a portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJan 28, 2011
Unhurried in its storytelling but unshakable in its impact. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 14, 2010
This is a beautiful, puzzling film. The enigmatic quality of Huppert's performance draws us in. Read full review
85
NPRElla TaylorDec 12, 2010
Yet in the end it's less the climactic madness and mayhem in White Material that sear the memory than it is the silent, balletic creep of child soldiers, grabbed out of school and sent with machetes and rifles through a forest to exact revenge for decades of repression. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 14, 2010
Denis brings it all together for a genuinely shocking finale, unexpected, yet in keeping with the film's consuming madness. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesDec 14, 2010
This haunting drama by Claire Denis burns with a mute fear and rage at the ongoing atrocities in central Africa. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 14, 2010
Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, White Material is an altogether stunning work. Read full review
80
MovielineMichelle OrangeDec 14, 2010
With Huppert as her paradoxical lightning rod, Denis courts class and colonial tensions until they fly apart in the last moments of the film. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 14, 2010
As Claire Denis' stunning new movie reminds us, she expects a lot of her audience but gives considerably more in return. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 14, 2010
It's a disorientingly beautiful movie at times, which promises -- as Denis always does, I think -- that human madness and human love will balance each other out, in the fullness of time. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterSura WoodDec 14, 2010
Denis creates the threat of imminent danger through stillness and austerity rather than action. She's helped immeasurably by an astringent, fully committed performance from her leading lady, a gaunt, impossibly resolute Isabelle Huppert. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 6, 2011
This is more of a poignant, haunting study of well-intentioned but doomed folly, embodied by a heroine whose bravery renders her blind to the world that is crumbling around her. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 14, 2010
What sustains the film is its tone of almost hallucinatory foreboding. White Material isn't about the calm before the storm but the seconds before the deluge. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 14, 2010
Its dramatic vexations are at war with Denis' prodigious visual skill. And the fight, ultimately, rewards the viewer. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoDec 14, 2010
The result is as impressive as one would expect. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 7, 2010
Denis' viewpoint and sympathies are sophisticated, complex and humane. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 7, 2010
A lean and hungry thing. With the sparest of storytelling, the French filmmaker ("35 Shots of Rum") devours her audience, swallowing us up in a yarn that is as enigmatic as it is engrossing. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineRichard MoweDec 14, 2010
This is one of Denis's most provocative films and also one of her most compelling. Read full review
60
EmpirePatrick PetersDec 14, 2010
Claire Denis' drama is an overly fastidious but insight-filled look at post-colonial Africa. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichDec 14, 2010
What starts as an intriguing reverie ends as a hollow allegory. Read full review
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