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

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

| Original Score: 2/5 | 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

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

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

It's hard to muster more than curious indifference to Margarethe von Trotta's "Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 18, 2010

What we have here is the story of a very cool nun from a thousand years ago.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 11, 2010

[A] superbly rendered and deeply absorbing religious drama...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2010

A gorgeously filmed, surprisingly tough-minded portrait of the 12th-century Benedictine nun, scholar, mystic, and composer.

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

Trotta ... makes a choice to view Hildegard's life in its externals and reveal few of the thoughts behind her sometimes forbidding facade. We never know what she's thinking. That's tantalizing.

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

Although von Trotta seems to regard von Bingen as some sort of medieval feminist precursor, there are enough fault lines in the portrayal to subvert hagiography.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 22, 2010

There are lengthy sections solely concerned with covering historical ground in which the platonic intimacy between the magistra and the pupil is completely forgotten.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 18, 2010

Sukowa makes Hildegard a likable and charismatic woman who risks a great deal to do good in an environment that leaves women little room for self-expression. Her intelligence and enthusiasm make her a proto-feminist force to be reckoned with.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 15, 2010

Von Trotta, an icon of the New German Cinema, doesn't have the technical chops for the fireworks you desire, so she settles for wan earnestness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 13, 2010

Vision is more immediate and immersive when dealing in the jealous attachments among sisters; when circumstance and politics tear Richardis from Hildegard, Sukowa's performance rears to towering heights of abjection.

| Oct 12, 2010