Awarded the Golden Lion at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, the shocking documentary Blood and Beauty by Laura Poitras hits theaters this week. He is intrigued by artist Nan Goldin, who revolutionized the art of photography and reinvented definitions of normalcy. A tireless activist, he has also fought for years against the Sackler family responsible for the opiate crisis in the United States and around the world.
Averaging 4.2 out of 5 (for 22 press releases on AlloCiné), All Beauty and Blood Spilled ranked as the best movies of the week, but also in second place for the best movies of 2023 (Steven Spielberg’s undefeated The Fabelmans and its rave 4.9/5).
What the press says:
According to Liberation:
“Filmmaker Laura Poitras and photographer Nan Goldin, forming an eventful alliance, offer us an incredible film of our time: both a retrospective and a manifesto of what art, life and political struggle can do – the triangle they can prepare. (Luke Chesel) 5/5
According to the positive:
“All Beauty and Bloodshed is a dark tale where devotion, intimacy and poetry come together.” (Jean-Philippe Domecq) 5/5
According to South West:
“This moving film manages to illuminate Nan Goldin’s artistic creation and her activism with equal intensity. In both these ways she describes a woman of integrity.” (Julien Rousset) 5/5
According to Cahiers du Cinema:
Poitras, without comment or cardboard, manages to reveal Goldin’s paradoxical position, inside and outside. This inclination, this taste, without even merging without immersion, without crossing worlds, he shares with the filmmaker who, from beginning to end, against the egotistical tropism of any artist’s biography, pursues a cross-era course.” (Charlotte Garson) 4/5
According to The Obs:
“The frozen faces of the Sacklers facing the victims’ families will not be forgotten, nor will the faces of the aged Goldin’s parents, imprinted with the disapproval and shame of a corrupt society.” (Nicholas Schaller) 4/5
According to Marie Claire:
“Laura Poitras recounts her wounds and her struggles in the opiate scandal in a moving documentary-confession with psychoanalytic undertones.” (Emily Barnett) 4/5
According to Telerama:
“But all the beauty and bloodshed makes me even more enthralled by Nan Goldin’s Self-Portrait, a photo-novel illustrated with her own images, some iconic and some unpublished.” (Samuel Duhair) 4/5
According to Le Journal du Dimanche:
“A bracing observation served up by powerful staging with total empathy for its subject.” (Stephanie Belpesch) 4/5
According to the first:
“Mixing images of this struggle with the photographer’s aesthetic and intimate journeys, Laura Poitras highlights the contours of an existence spent fighting against very powerful repressive American forces: the Puritanism of yesterday, the hatred and impunity of the hyper-rich today. .” (Frederick Fuber) 3/5
According to Critikat.com:
“Considered as fragments of a more global history, Nan Goldin’s photographs allow the documentary filmmaker to express the unspoken connection between life events and the construction of a worldview.” (Adrien Mitterrand) 3/5
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
