Critic Reviews

This superb documentary captures Gore Vidal in all his ever-articulate glory.

It's an admittedly hagiographic film, an unabashed celebration of the man and his work and worldview. The few mild naysayers are largely set up to be knocked down, but as such the film is invigorating.

Heavily seasoned with epigrams worthy of Oscar Wilde, this entertaining documentary portrays Vidal as a pessimistic political prophet with streaks of paranoia and misanthropy, but a truth teller nonetheless.

Ever mindful of the line he straddled between thinker and flamethrower, this "Gore Vidal" is nevertheless a lovingly packaged greatest hits from a legendary rebel of letters.

The film, like the man, is never boring.

It’s almost a hagiography, and Vidal would have demanded no less.

We encounter a man of great talent and usefulness, and yet someone most of us can be glad never to have met.

It has been said before but it’s worth saying again: Gore Vidal was born to the toga, even if he never actually wore one.

The grounding material here is with the elderly Vidal himself... Unfailingly witty and devastatingly insightful, he personifies that near-extinct species — the public intellectual.

The unbalanced appraisal of Vidal's life and work in Nicholas Wrathall's documentary diminishes the effect of the writer's engaging dissension of American political policy.