The Son of Joseph

Emmet Holmes-Boyes

A film with a unique and fascinating style. Slow to start, i was quickly drawn in by the intrusive eyes of each character as it felt like they looked back at you. Amazing interpretation of the nativity story

Claudia Kappenberg

Laconic script, minimally styled action, slow film. Touching, elegant, witty. Eugene Green's cameo appearances also are a treat.

Draughtsman Without Contract

None more droll. Loved this so much. From the deliberate stately Baroque staging and the beautifully delivered lines to the wonderfully beatific Natacha Regnier this is an absolute delight. And careful reading of the credits delivers some final amusement.

El Biffo

Some have criticized this as too Bresssonian, too Biblical. I do not consider these to be faults, but strengths. After I gave my mom a copy of Au Hasard, Balthazar, she reported to me "Too Christian!" I said, "Give the disc back to me then" and she replied "Oh, no! It's a great film." This is a noble film, conscious of and confident in its inspiration.

tidal waif

+ Green's use of myth is hardly gratuitous. Jesus' story is as familiar to us as Cinderella's or Ulysses', hence director's meddling with a plot that stopped being a sacred and untouchable biography, becoming a modular, adaptable, shifting ensemble. Now the quirk distinguishing YHWH from diff. Supreme Beings was his being a divine Person revealed in History, a full-blown religious revolution! Unlike other God Persons

Jason

Already a huge fan of Eugène Green, especially THE PORTUGUESE NUN and LA SAPIENZA, I was nonetheless taken aback by the excellence of THE SON OF JOSEPH, a film engaged in something like free play within the allegorical register. We know of the flat Bressonian affect of Green's actors and his clinical form. The emotional impact of this film is transcendent precisely because it overwhelms the strictures of a method.

Matthew Martens

Hopefully just a place-holder, but for now: I really liked it. It is a good film. I won't say I sensed it immediately, but it didn't take long. Without in any way meaning to suggest a hierarchy, I don't think it would be too amiss to say it felt like ascending a slippery slope from Bresson through Kaurismaki to, crazily enough, and only in a very particular way, Capra. Maybe it's just the season.

Karl J. Kipling

3.5. Green's only once banged the gong for me - first of his I saw, PONT DES ARTS - but though the others haven't quite succeeded far's I'm concerned, he's building an estimable oeuvre of interesting failures.