Von Trotta's film is competently made, with impressive lighting and design.

| Mar 4, 2021

As a religious drama, It captivates me when Von Trotta captures an austere, absorbing and very realistic portrait of the desire for female independence. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 16, 2020

A lovely and lyrical film, and thanks to some striking production design and cinematography, it is a period piece that doesn't feel like a period piece.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2019

It is a memorable, beautiful film.

| Feb 17, 2015

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vision is didactic and a bit stilted-although to be fair, so are most mainstream biopics rehashing historical events more familiar than this one, which presents its subject as a rousing protofeminist.

| Jul 1, 2013

Sukowa gives Hildegard intriguing complexity and an almost irresistible charisma ... but the great [film] about this woman who embraced faith, art, and science is yet to arrive.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 12, 2012

Vision, a somber but beautifully rendered story of the life of 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, isn't a religious movie so much as a movie about people who take religion seriously.

| Aug 12, 2011

(A) portrayal of an immortal spirit thriving in a unique vision.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2011

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 3, 2011

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 3, 2011

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2011

There was obviously much to this woman, yet somehow Visions feels curiously empty feeling.

| Original Score: C- | Feb 3, 2011

Vision is shot through with issues of power - personal, political, spiritual. Which makes it a terrifically resonant work.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 17, 2010

Von Trotta and Sukowa create a very nuanced study of Hildegard, one that imbues the figure with human foibles in a number sufficient to keep at bay any hagiographic impulses.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 10, 2010

A reasonably effective presentation of the director's feminist view of a fascinating medieval figure, though one that's very deliberate in pacing and visually quite severe.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 9, 2010

A medieval pre-feminist nun who poked a few holes in the stained glass ceiling. Though there's little elbow room for nonbeliever audience comfort zones. And while Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, Hildegard led the nuns out of a horny monastery.

| Dec 5, 2010

Barbara Sukowa brings her veteran presence to the role, and nicely fuses its dual nature, holy instrument and holy terror, the passive vessel of a higher power and the active force of the good mother.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 3, 2010

Vision takes a serious and mostly positive view of spirituality without uniformly endorsing the established Church, which is shown as a male-dominated political and business enterprise as much as a keeper of souls.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 2, 2010

Although this true story offers numerous opportunities for skepticism and irony, director Margarethe von Trotta accords Hildegard the respect of a proto-feminist forebear and frames her in golden light like a Vermeer painting.

| Nov 24, 2010