What Is Democracy?

[A] kaleidoscopic, somewhat random, yet always involving approach to a major concept that, despite the wealth and breadth of Taylor's offerings here, feels like just the first step in surveying anew where democracy stands.

[Taylor] presents an inclusive and necessary debate, asking whether democracy today really is of, by, and for the people, and if it ever was.

Unfocused but consistently engaging.

Like democracy itself, the movie assumes such a broad mandate and has such noble intentions that indicating its shortcomings seems almost beside the point.

The film indexes the manner in which democracy has become abstracted and polluted, especially by governmental capitulation to the meddling interests of free-market capitalism.

An extended and good-looking essay, it serves as a sharp reminder to pay attention to politics and to remember that the personal and the local are political.

What is Democracy? asks that question by posing it to various people - experts in Greek history, social scientists, academics, ordinary Americans - and comes up with some startling answers.

Astra Taylor's examination of what might be one of the most cherished concepts of our time is bold, proudly intellectual, decidedly feminist, and, in its perhaps most incisive aspect, skeptical...

What Is Democracy? is a fascinating documentary that poses a lot of thought-provoking questions and makes one wonder if we indeed live in a democracy or just thinly veiled oligarchies in slavish service to economic elites.

Taylor's investigation feels intended not to make audiences scream or cry, but to make them think ... and, perhaps, to take their thoughts and put them into useful, democracy-upholding action.