Synopsis
Heinz Bütler interviews Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) late in life. Cartier-Bresson pulls out photographs, comments briefly, and holds them up to Bütler's camera. A few others share observations, including Isabelle Huppert, Arthur Miller, and Josef Koudelka. Cartier-Bresson talks about his travels, including Mexico in the 1930s, imprisonment during World War II, being with Gandhi moments before his assassination, and returning to sketching late in life. He shows us examples. He talks about becoming and being a photographer, about composition, and about some of his secrets to capture the moment.
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Recommendations
- 83
Entertainment Weekly
He rarely allowed himself to be interviewed, but Henri Cartier-Bresson, here nearing 100, comes off as a marvelous, spritely, and companionable figure. - 80
The New York Times
The documentary, which subscribes to the Great Man school of reverential portraiture, is not a biography but an interview (in French, simultaneously translated into English) conceived as a master class on art appreciation, with guest commentators augmenting Cartier-Bresson's own sparsely chosen words. - 63
TV Guide Magazine
Overall, it's like watching a home movie of a charming relative. - 63
Boston Globe
Pays high-toned tribute to its subject. How high-toned? Bach and Ravel play on the soundtrack as a honeyed light streams through the windows of Cartier-Bresson's Paris apartment. - 60
Salon
This is an ambling, relaxed talking-head docu in the grand European style. - 58
The A.V. Club
It isn't a biography of the legendary photographer, and it's not exactly an essay. Mostly, Bütler fills the screen with Cartier-Bresson's photographs while people explain their greatness. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
A viewer of the film misses any sense of what distinguishes a great Cartier-Bresson picture from a good one, never mind a bad one. And the photographer himself cannot have been happy with the short shrift the documentary gives to drawing, which occupied him through most of his last decades. - 50
Village Voice
Such informality leads to numerous lulls, but when the photographer perks up the results are delightful.
