Dramas don't come much bleaker than Beanpole, director Kantemir Balagov's wrenching story about the damage caused by war, and the exceedingly high cost of survival.

| Jan 27, 2021

Balagov's beautifully acted second feature...

| Aug 14, 2020

The story is compounded by Balagov's imposing visual aesthetic, which was evident in Closeness but here is on a whole new level.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2020

They can't look away. Neither may you.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 27, 2020

If you can grit through it, the film offers a rewarding - if also unnerving - look at survival in the face of tragedy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2020

Even if the film seems slow at times, there's always something to look at, including Miroshnichenko and Perelygina, who are able to find grace and dignity in two such odd, hollowed out characters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 19, 2020

There are a lot of powerful scenes. It does end up being a little bit monotone... A little lightness would not have destroyed what was going on in this film.

| Feb 15, 2020

Will they ever know this kind of brightness and cheer again, or are their clothes and peeling wallpaper expressing emotions that they cannot? Balagov doesn't say, but in spite of it all he leaves you with a shred of hope.

| Feb 14, 2020

The film is an improbably thrilling work of art by virtue of its physical beauty and its relentless intensity of feeling about people who would prefer in their heart of shattered hearts to feel nothing.

| Feb 13, 2020

It's a melodrama about life after wartime, a dual character study and sometimes veers very close to being a bleak, caustic buddy comedy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 4, 2020

The choices in themselves are not the problem; the difficulties arise from writing that has fewer good ideas about these people than it does about their circumstances.

| Feb 3, 2020

As difficult as Beanpole can be to watch, it quietly accumulates kindnesses alongside the crueler twists of fate, and hopes that warmth is more sustaining.

| Jan 30, 2020

Not only is Beanpole one of the first essential cinematic works released in theaters this year, it is also among the most involving character studies in recent memory.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 29, 2020

This movie tells a tough, unsparing story about war trauma, which seeps into souls and bodies and inevitably becomes - Balagov suggests - a generational bequest.

| Jan 28, 2020

The film's bleak finale underlines this larger political point, but smartly does so in the service of character development rather than pure pedagogy.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 28, 2020

The characters don't seem to exist outside the stilted drama of their individual scenes; the ambiguities of Balagov's detached approach yield a sentimental tale of pride and reverence.

| Jan 27, 2020

Balagov, in thrall to the debased visual motifs of depicting agony, ends up banalizing the women and the era he wishes to honor.

| Jan 24, 2020

Beanpole is moving, disturbing, overwhelming.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 11, 2019

A gorgeous, glacial exploration of lives permanently changed by war.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2019

Balagov displays the cinematic skills of an auteur at least twice his age, and both lead actresses are captivating.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 12, 2019