Abril Despedaçado (Behind the Sun) Reviews
Top CriticAfter a certain point, no one is right and no one is wrong, both sides have boundless grievances, and it's the audience that wants to run away with the circus.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
St. Paul Pioneer Press
The first time I saw the Brazilian Behind the Sun, there were no subtitles, and I couldn't understand a word. The second time, it had subtitles, and, to tell you the truth, the first time was better.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Combustible Celluloid
Becomes nothing more than a waiting game -- an annoying, endless deathwatch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
A family blood feud between neighbors over land in the rural sugarcane fields of the Brazil of 1910.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
A dreary Aristotelian tragedy whose contemporary geopolitical relevance cannot compensate for the lack of gripping protagonists.
The appearance of circus performers in any film not by Fellini usually bodes ill, and it does so here.
Old School Reviews
arthouse fans hunger for a lot more than tortilla chips for an appetizer.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Film Journal International
Turns a potentially interesting story into, well, refined sugar.
You're always aware ... that you're watching a quaintly middle-class, museum-poster notion of an 'elemental' peasant fable.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
A lovely journey, but it's like a picture book whose text is merely incidental.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Salles starts with the loudly trumpeted theme, then tacks on a slim plot to justify the clamour.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Film Threat
a family saga told with all the muscle of the best Sergio Leone western.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Provides a window into a radically different time and place.
Filmcritic.com
Poignant and touching.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
A sumptuously filmed parable on the futility of violence.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4
Spirituality and Practice
Salles shows us through this powerful parable that true peace will come only when individuals disarm their hearts and act in love.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
There isn't a line that doesn't echo with heavy meaning or a character that has a life outside his or her dramatic purpose in this allegory.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Salles has the confidence of a storyteller too entranced by his tale to worry about the resistance of his audience, which he thus effortlessly overcomes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Salles ... has crafted a compelling existential tableau.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
