Zama
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: April 13, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
89
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJul 4, 2018
The final shots are both majestic and damning, and they lift the film with a kind of gentle contempt into a surrealism that makes an awful kind of sense, the world in its lushness swallowing Zama as it will swallow us all. Some movies unfold as dreams; Zama dances us playfully toward the edge of nightmare and then asks us to open our eyes. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 26, 2018
The first thing to be said of Lucrecia Martel’s Spanish-language film is that it stands as a startling original. Though the story is elusive, the images speak for themselves, and they are stunning. (The cinematographer was Rui Poças ; what does he know about light and color that others don’t?) Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 26, 2018
Give yourself some time to adjust and Martel's style, at once immersive and disorienting, starts to feel like a corrective, a clearer way of seeing and hearing. The physical world here is not some abstract commodity; it is fiercely, palpably present, and utterly indifferent to the whims of men arrogant enough to think they can tame it into submission. Read full review
100
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsApr 25, 2018
Martel’s sensibility is as oblique as it is sensitive, confounding as it is grimly humorous. It’s a movie that seems constantly to be spilling the secrets of this world, but without fanfare—there’s an unsettling banality to it all. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyApr 13, 2018
Ms. Martel’s attention to period detail is impeccable without being show-offish about it. But Zama is not the kind of period piece that aims for suspension of disbelief. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 13, 2018
Poetic is a word that gets thrown around willy-nilly, but it fits perfectly here. So does woozy. It feels less like a film than a high fever, burning slow but hot in order to incinerate a virus. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 12, 2018
Ms. Martel is exploring the past, how we got here and why, but she is more interested in relations of power than in individual psychological portraits. The monstrous must be humanized to be understood, which doesn’t mean it deserves our tears. Read full review
100
The GuardianXan Brooks
[Martel's] film is haunted, haunting and admittedly prone to the occasional longueur insofar as it runs to its own peculiar rhythm; maybe even its own primal logic. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy Lodge
The frustrating nine-year wait for new material from Martel has done nothing to blunt her exquisite, inventive command of sound and image, nor her knack for subtly violent exposure of social and racial prejudice on the upper rungs of the class ladder. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineChristopher Gray
How strange and apt that the year’s most sensorially and ideologically dense film is also a comedy of microaggressions, built on the minor workplace humiliations of a pencil-pusher in the 1790s. Read full review
90
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 19, 2018
There’s absolutely nothing else like it in theaters this year, which I mean as both a hearty endorsement and a necessary forewarning. Zama is a viewing experience that can be frustratingly inaccessible at first, but it blooms in bold, surprising directions. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyApr 12, 2018
The dramatic fusion of physical and administrative power captures nothing less than the bloody forging of modernity. Read full review
90
Village VoiceDevika GirishApr 12, 2018
Martel engages directly with Argentina’s colonial legacy, although her approach remains allusive and layered. She transforms Benedetto’s epic into a dizzying, sensory head trip about a man’s gradual psychological decay, allowing larger historical and political themes to emerge organically from her meticulous formal compositions. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJul 25, 2018
With Zama, Martel no longer hints at that past, but actively exhumes it, unleashing ghosts in the process. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 12, 2018
Zama is a patient, delicately strange film chronicling an increasingly impatient man and a destiny beyond his control. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineDom SinacolaApr 18, 2018
Bewitching and masterfully rendered, Zama is an elegant, ravishing, often delightfully strange achievement. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd
In its own befuddling, bone-dry way, this is a comedy—one that takes fiendish pleasure in puncturing the pomp and circumstance of a cog in the empire-building machine. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica Kiang
The formal control is remarkable, but sometimes almost stultifying, as though Martel had spent every moment of this intervening decade plotting how to pack each scene more densely, to the point it feels like Zama” could maybe stop a bullet. It will certainly deter the less persistent viewer. Read full review
80
Film ThreatFilipe FreitasJan 9, 2019
Filled with situations that mirror the social and racial preconception of the time, this hypnotic tale of punishment and atrocious colonialism is an engrossing experience. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfApr 20, 2018
The film’s languorous, tangential flow isn’t for everyone, but you’ll be surprised by how easily you can roll with it, especially if you tune into Zama’s cringe-funny frequency. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala Halligan
It’s confusing and heavy and bears down hard until a third-act swerve throws in colours and movement and spins the viewer out of the theatre in wonder. It won’t be forgotten. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChristian HolubApr 20, 2018
The film makes a compelling portrait of how job assignments can eventually become jail sentences, and how years can drift into each other with little care for unfulfilled dreams. As it goes, Zama ponders the unanswerable question of what kind of life, exactly, is worth living. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Tina HassanniaApr 19, 2018
Zama is a disjointed watch that is both challenging and mesmerizing. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid Rooney
For much of its running time, Zama is merely remote and enervating, too accurately reflecting its protagonist’s predicament. Read full review
58
The Film StageZhuo-Ning Su
It’s tonally and thematically so fragmented, the context simply isn’t there. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 25, 2018
All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing. Read full review
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