ELLING
"If it weren't acted with such naturalistic precision, Petter Naess's
small, good-natured film would be an indigestibly sugary slice of
inspirational pie in the sky...Not a word of clinical jargon is heard
...The absence of terms like bipolar, schizophrenic, borderline and
paranoid, not to mention the whole galaxy of garden-variety neuroses
with fancy labels, proves refreshing...'Elling' believes so fervently
in humanity that it feels almost anachronistic, and it is too cute
by half. But arriving at a particularly dark moment in history, it
offers flickering reminders of the ties that bind us." -Stephen Holden,
The New York Times
"...you may feel irritated and manipulated by the pinch-voiced title
character as he discovers the latent poet in his soul...'Elling' is
a mushy, smushy ode to friendship...In the effort to be heartwarming
and universal, it abandons any attempt at a clinical explanation of
its characters' neuroses." -Jan Stuart, Newsday
"...spare, funny, captivating...Ellefsen and Nordin are absolutely
perfect together...There is a little of all of us in their awkwardness,
fears and neuroses, and we root for their success in the mundane as
if they were ascending Everest....An Oscar also-ran this year for
best foreign-language film, 'Elling' is still in the running for 2002's
most uplifting movie." -Jack Mathews, The New York Daily News
"... another movie striving to locate amusement and sentimental solace
in the shenanigans of the mentally disabled... That neither protagonist
has a distinguishable condition hardly matters because both are just
actory concoctions, defined by childlike dimness and a handful of
quirks...'Elling' is nothing if not carefully controlled hokum..."
-Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice |
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