Patience (After Sebald) (2012)

94% of critics liked it
(16 reviews)
75% of users liked it
(165 ratings)

A richly textured essay film on landscape, art, history, life and loss, Patience (After Sebald) offers a unique exploration of the work and influence of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Sebald (1944 - 2001). With contributions from major writers, artists and filmmakers, including Adam Philips,… More A richly textured essay film on landscape, art, history, life and loss, Patience (After Sebald) offers a unique exploration of the work and influence of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Sebald (1944 - 2001). With contributions from major writers, artists and filmmakers, including Adam Philips, Robert Macfarlane, Rick Moody and Tacita Dean, the film is structured around a walk through coastal East Anglia, the same path followed by Sebald in his ground-breaking book, "The Rings of Saturn." Directed by the Grierson Award winning director of Joy Division, Patience is the first film on this important and vital writer, and marks ten years since his untimely death. -- (C) Cinema Guild

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 22 min.
Directed By: Grant Gee
Genres: Documentary, Musical & Performing Arts, Art House & International, Special Interest

In Theaters: May 9, 2012 Limited
Studio: Cinema Guild

Critic Reviews

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post
Sometimes the scenery is breathtaking, but more often the narration lends the landscape an interest it wouldn't otherwise have.
A.O. Scott, New York Times
Curious souls new to this writer will discover a useful introduction (including passages from "The Rings of Saturn," read by the actor Jonathan Pryce) and a handy map.
Michelle Orange, Village Voice
Retraces Sebald's steps, reuniting the novel's descriptions of actual places and spaces with their images and weaving in illuminating commentary from admirers (Rick Moody, Robert McFarlane).
Ronnie Scheib, Variety
This deconstructive pic never wields Sebald's subversive power but follows evocatively in his wake.
Tom Keogh, Seattle Times
A visionary composition on a series of spoken reflections about a literary work - itself full of layered free-association - Gee's intricate, prismatic film might sound as if it must be buried in abstraction.
Noel Murray, AV Club
In a way, Patience is a lot like how one of its interview subjects describes an attempt to do Sebald's walk: He says he could retrace the steps, but not the experiences, or the revelations.
Eric Monder, Film Journal International
A fresh, strange, downbeat new entry to the "nonfiction art film" genre.
Kenji Fujishima, Slant Magazine
A wide-ranging piece of literary criticism brought to vivid cinematic life, bursting with ideas and inspired visual translations of them.
Philip French, Observer [UK]
Grant Gee's film should make anyone want to read The Rings of Saturn and the rest of Sebald's relatively small but exquisite oeuvre, some eight or nine books in all.
, This is London
Gee, who made the award-winning Joy Division, conducts his quiet study with considerable skill...
Xan Brooks, Guardian [UK]
In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination.
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
Grant Gee's documentary is very winning.
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
If you haven't read the book, you'll want to. If you have read the book, you'll want to read it again.
Ian Nathan, Empire Magazine
With so many films adapted from novels, it's nice to see cinema paying homage to unheralded greats of literature like Sebald.
Sam Wigley, Total Film
As Jonathan Pryce reads passages and academic voices take turns to chew over Sebald's visionary opus, B&W footage of country roadsides and wind-blasted coastlines turns rural Suffolk into something truly otherworldly.