Critics reviews

The Search is what happens when winning awards supersedes making cinema. It's what happens when pastiche is mistaken for art; when Bérénice Bejo and Annette Benning have Best Actress prizes on their résumés; when the context informing a movie is only other movies.

...The film at least has the merits of proving beyond doubt that, a) The Artist did not herald the arrival of a worthy filmmaker, and b) Bérénice Bejo's acting talents are severely limited, and she is probably best off sticking to silent roles. Rarely has a film so thoroughly deserved its resounding chorus of boos.

In an effort to make an Important Statement, Michel Hazanavicius's Chechen War drama The Search (a remake of Fred Zinnemann's 1948 film) certainly fell well short of success. Although it seemed okay to me on the terms it sets for itself, its over-familiar story... was widely despised.

Hazanavicius has clearly done his research, both into the Chechen conflict and into the bleaker end of eastern European cinema, and The Search contains perhaps 45 minutes of very compelling cinema. But the film soon plummets into well-meaning kitsch, not least because of Béjo's excruciatingly gauche performance.

The scenes among the doltish Russian psychos are something like a passage fromThe Tin Drum but with only the tin. The scene in which Bejo, who's very good but misdirected in English, delivers her big report to the Foreign Affairs Council should be a shaming moment. But it's presented as monotony.

[Hazanavicius] here paves a road to hell with good intentions, miscasting, reductive politics and dreadful writing... Ms. Bejo never convinces, while Annette Bening induces cringes as a patronizing American aid worker.

A stiff, lumbering humanitarian drama that works obtusely and tirelessly against its director's spryest skills, it's proof positive that good intentions pave not only the road to hell, but the one to dreary mediocrity as well.

The Artist triumph, which started with acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival and ended on Oscar night in 2011, may have given Hazanvicius—previously only known as a director of comedic material—the boost of confidence to try something different. It's unfortunate that he would abandon an arena where he deserved the attention, considering the innovative approach of "The Artist" to explore the appeal of silent cinema, for a humorless effort devoid of fresh ideas.

Hazanavicius focuses most of his attention on putting a human face to the conflict, and to some extent his representation of the worst affected families is commendable. The problem is he doesn't do enough to tell the story from their perspective, offering no political context and never really engaging with the daily regimen these impoverished and vulnerable people had to go through in order to survive.

As in Paul Haggis' Crash, the most pressing question is which of these loosely interlinked narratives is the most risible. Hazanavicius, who also wrote the screenplay, is unquestionably sincere, but subtlety is not his forte, to say the least; The Search rolls over its thinly conceived characters like a Russian tank, flattening each one into a didactic position paper.