It’s a bit of a mess, falling between two stools: reenactmernt and reappraisal. But it has its moving and interesting moments all the same.
Comment
10/28/06
Primo Levi's Journey (2007)
84 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 19
Fresh: 16
Rotten:3
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: In this documentary, director Davide Ferrario follows the path that author Primo Levi took in his escape from Auschwitz to Turin, Italy. PRIMO LEVI'S JOURNEY features narration from Oscar winner Chris Cooper.... [More]
Director: Davide Ferrario
Reviews for Primo Levi's Journey
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top CriticClick to read the article
01/14/08
Italian documentary filmmaker Davide Ferrario, who specializes in what he calls "on the road" documentaries, decided to retrace Primo Levi's steps in modern Europe. It was a wise choice.
11/02/07
Top Critic If some of its connections remain obscure, its storytelling is both sinuous and resounding. History, memory, forgetfulness%u2014all comprise the present.
09/15/07
If one artist is deserving of a documentary account of his story, it's Italian author Primo Levi.
09/06/07
Primo Levi's Journey is a rather unfocused but ultimately provocative portrait of Eastern Europe.
08/22/07
Top Critic For filmgoers who value something fresh and original on the big screen, the documentary delivers.
08/21/07
Travelogue is exquisitely shot and the dark poetry of Levi's words, read at intervals throughout the film, is brought to haunting life by a suitably weary-sounding Chris Cooper.
08/17/07
The film lacks a certain coherence, and Levi -- one of Italy's most important postwar writers -- is mostly relegated to an excuse for a sociopolitical travelogue.
08/17/07
Top Critic A profound meditation on the unevenness of history, reminding us -- as Faulkner once remarked -- that the past not only isn't dead, it isn't really past at all.
08/16/07
A thoughtful and insightful Italian documentary that retraces writer Primo Levi's 1945 trip from Poland to Italy after he was liberated from Auschwitz; it contains a fascinating glimpse of post-communist Europe.
08/15/07
Primo Levi's Journey is almost willfully opaque about the actual circumstances of Primo Levi's journey. Who exactly was this man we're meant to be paying homage to, and why did it take him so long to get home?
08/14/07
Even when Ferrario's observation of a country's distinct political anxiety is interestingly tied to one of Levi's philosophical musings about the self and the world, the film still radiates the aloofness of a dry academic lecture.
08/13/07
A sober, melancholy recreation of a journey that Primo Levi took mostly through Eastern Europe, after his liberation from Auschwitz.
08/02/07
Sensitive study of the journey taken by Primo Levi in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Mixes his own words with ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down by the end of the USSR and Eastern European socialism. Makes subtle political points t
07/29/07
Top Critic Primo Levi brought an extraordinarily empirical eye to all his writing.
09/23/06
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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