Critic Reviews

There’s never a false moment.

As gritty as Heaven Knows What often feels, it’s leavened by empathy and poetic moments: desperate kisses, a passed-out couch nap lit by slanting sunbeams, the beautifully eerie synth music of Tomita. This isn’t an easy watch, but it validates every risk we want our most emboldened filmmakers to take.

Heaven Knows What, will not appeal to the majority of casual moviegoers. Likewise, I have no doubts regarding the film's remarkable achievement.

Heaven Knows What isn’t interested in merely exploring the world of New York City addicts. It wants to make their experiences felt, with the dissonant, amp-cracking roar of a punk anthem.

In the thinly veiled version of her life that appears onscreen, the actress unforgettably shows the deadening toll of always being on the move, only to return to the exact same place.

All this desperation and squalor reeks of authenticity. Many of the actors are from the streets themselves, and such locations as a crash pad rented out by a dotty lady could never be dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter.

As captured by the Safdies, they are — one and all — persuasive, arresting and fiercely in the moment, whether scamming or shooting up or doing heaven knows what to get by.

Because there’s no real narrative — just the constant effort to score and survive, plus Harley’s dysfunctional on/off love affair with Ilya — Heaven Knows What doesn’t so much conclude as just stop, which is less than totally satisfying.

Heaven Knows What is a hard movie to recommend because of its unrelenting intensity and hideously depressing subject. It's a hard movie, period, but it's exceptionally well-made and beautiful in its execution.

Holmes may not have the polished technique of a formally trained actress, but she has an innate capacity for drama, and whether or not she can go on to play roles further removed from her own experience, she’s electrifying in this one.