Director Paul Schrader is too removed from the powerful emotions roiling through the film, but it may be the only way to handle the horrors he's forced to confront.
Comment
09/21/09
Adam Resurrected (2008)
35
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:37
Fresh:13
Rotten:24
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: Such an unusual tale might have made for a compelling drama, but Adam Resurrected suffers from narrative confusion and an emotional detachment at its core.
Synopsis: The trouble with Holocaust movies is that they're about the Holocaust; they resurrect an illustrious horror, habited by history's most reliable demons, with little to say except that, yes, this was... [More]
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi, Ayelet Zurer
Director: Paul Schrader
Reviews for Adam Resurrected
Between Jeff Goldblum's wildly over-mannered performance and the schlocky treatment of serious subject matter, it's hard to know whether to simply dismiss the film or be outraged by it.
12/11/08
Weird combination of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a Holocaust drama is (almost) saved by Jeff Goldblum's commanding lead performance.
12/11/08
There's no doubt about this one extending [Paul Schrader's] run of low profile non-events.
12/11/08
Might have been a touching story of deep irony if Schrader's approach didn't suffer so much from narrative confusion in an effort to convey the disorientation at its center.
11/14/08
One cannot recommend this film strongly enough.
12/18/08
The director, Paul Schrader, tries for cleansing audacity, but ends up too close to farce.
12/10/08
In a less competitive year, Jeff Goldblum would have had a shot at an Oscar nod.
12/19/08
Top CriticInexplicable, eclectic and esoteric, it's a sardonic turn-off to a mainstream audience.
01/06/09
For all the nightmarish scenes conceived as a creepy cross between Burroughs and Weisel, we don't receive the cathartic satisfaction typically related to the dramatization of Jewish tragedy.
12/22/08
The director’s absent conviction fails to make the film’s absurdities tragic, and instead comes close to rendering its tragedies absurd.
12/10/08
Savage gallows humor might have substituted for pathos. But Adam Resurrected feels so detached that there is not a laugh, nor even a wicked smirk of nihilistic glee, to be gleaned.
12/12/08
Top CriticYou've got to hand it to Schrader: He pulls off enough of this impressionistic comedy to provoke passions and arguments anew about a topic that seems done to death.
09/09/08
An experience that is intellectual where it should be emotional, one belonging more on the stage than on the screen, a picture to be respected more than wrapped up in.
11/05/08
It seems to have been written in a tone of magical realism, but the director is Paul Schrader, a filmmaker who has many talents, but no feel for whimsy, let alone magic.
12/19/08
This is a really off-the-wall nihilistic fantasy that may please a small segment of the audience and perhaps even become a cult film.
12/16/08
Jeff Goldblum transforms even his lanky befuddlement into tall dignity here and ends up giving the intellectually mature performance of his career.
12/10/08
The ending throws away the complexity that makes the rest of the movie so interesting
04/21/09
This is the rare film that is memorable, affecting, and bad.
12/11/08
...a wrong-headed and surprisingly interminable failure from prolific filmmaker Schrader.
10/28/08
Latest News for Adam Resurrected
October 30, 2008:
DIY Distribution Comes of Age 
Once strictly the realm of the truly hard to watch, DIY film distribution is on the upswing among filmmakers disenchanted with the studio system. More...
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