Avis des critiques

A case can be made that Minervini isn’t the ideal person to tell these stories, but imputing bad faith to his motivations seems reductive, especially since his style gamely points up its own contradictions and complexities.

With two films, Minervini makes a compelling case—should anyone have failed to intuit this fact—that fear is one of the defining aspects of contemporary American life. . . . He is interested in observing how fear functions in shaping people’s daily lives, whether dominating them or being kept in abeyance.

It’s an impassioned act of portraiture that courses through with rage, fear, despair and a measure of hope.

Filming in black-and-white, Minervini finds poetry in silhouettes, the city’s musical rhythms and small moments of generosity.

[Minervini’s] approach, which might be intrusive or exploitative in the wrong hands, is the product of nurtured relationships; he spent years before production started building trust with his subjects, and ended up shooting over 180 hours of raw footage.

A furious missive from the front lines of a fractured America.

In the past I have found the access Minervini gains from his subjects unnerving and possibly untoward, but in Hill he’s found a true collaborator with the self-possession to be an endlessly dynamic transformative force.

Minervini’s film takes the opposite approach as that of Alfonso Cuarón, for What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? plunges into the thick of it, conjuring long histories of pain and anger engendered by American society and institutions—and conjured in the immediacy of those things blazing directly before our eyes.

It’s character that matters here, fleeting moments rather than overarching drama. Perhaps this is hybrid filmmaking as termite art—and who cares how long it is, it probably should be longer.

Part of what makes Roberto Minervini’s new film such a vital document of our contemporary moment is the fact that, despite its broad sweep and multiple perspectives, it almost goes out of its way _not_ to feel definitive.

A triptych of two young brothers, a New Black Panther squad, and a woman who owns a bar—and her experiences—with an energy and resilience that leaps off the screen. A star is born, indeed.