Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Matthew Akers' documentary captures Marina Abramović with rare intimacy, chronicling the preparation and execution of her landmark MoMA retrospective. The film earns high marks for its subject's sheer presence and emotional rawness — watching visitors break down across from Abramović at her silent sitting piece is genuinely extraordinary, and the film conveys performance art's power to a skeptical mainstream audience. Novelty is high because the subject herself is singular and the documentary finds an unusual intersection of endurance, vulnerability, and artistic legacy. Acting is rated highly in the sense that Abramović's own on-camera presence is magnetic and unguarded. Cinematography is competent and occasionally striking but largely functional. The plot/structure follows a fairly conventional documentary arc of 'artist prepares for big show,' limiting its storytelling ambition somewhat, and the ending, while emotionally resonant, doesn't fully transcend the format.