Paradise

Andrei Konchalovsky's film is more than an exercise, as pitiless moments accumulate with enraged relentlessness.

The film’s tone and outlook is changeable throughout — down to a striking, only semi-successful framing device of docu-style testimonies that hover deliberately between worlds.

There's a lot that's wonderful about Andrei Konchalovsky's Holocaust drama Paradise and yet there's something fundamentally wrong with the film.

Paradise is a strikingly shot Holocaust drama that ultimately seems confused about whose story it’s telling or to what end.

Strong performances and outstanding cinematography aren't enough to rescue an unfocused and episodic screenplay, which will leave many stranded in a purgatorial cinematic-halfway house between bliss and despair.

Paradise and its predictable waltz of suffering, choked consciousness and monstrosity adds little to the problematic subset of camp-themed World War II movies, which feel like nostalgia for hell.

The Holocaust has undergone some awkward treatments on screen before, but one of the most ungainly recent examples must be Andrei Konchalovsky’s Paradise, a well-intentioned but very soft-edged mess of romance, metaphysics and historical theorising.