David Anderson

"Haroun masterfully tricks us into caring with a last call upping of the ante, and when all the cards are shown, the true consequences of a moment of selfish hubris resound with a hurt and loss beyond our jaded expectations. Haroun thoroughly prepares us for a cloudy day. And then he unleashes a hurricane."

"Haroun masterfully tricks us into caring with a last call upping of the ante, and when all the cards are shown, the true consequences of a moment of selfish hubris resound with a hurt and loss beyond our jaded expectations. Haroun thoroughly prepares us for a cloudy day. And then he unleashes a hurricane."

The film’s paunchiness is quite surprising considering the taut storytelling of Melville’s popular crime dramas. While attributed with adopting American Film Noir to Europe, the influence flowed both ways, as Melville’s raw, gritty late 60s - early 70s shoot’em ups were stylistically copied by several Hollywood films of the period. His last two films, Le Cercle Rouge and Un Flic were both impressive exercises in gripping hard-boiledness, with the latter even surviving a laughably botched helicopter special effects sequence – filmed in unconvincing miniature, the resulting tableau looked like something from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood – to remain an engrossing entertainment. But this commitment to crystal coherence is sadly lacking in Léon Morin, Priest.

"But just when audiences unravel the first couple of knots – and congratulate themselves on their cleverness – they realize the gnarled mess at their feet has somehow grown larger, with twisting narrative threads that angrily recoil and wrap around themselves. Religion is jumbled with politics, childhood innocence melds with kinky sexuality and supreme beings cruise singles bars, all while the living freely mingle with the dead. Any effort to find the end of the ongepochkit cord is useless; it’s vanished into a new plane of existence."

"But just when audiences unravel the first couple of knots – and congratulate themselves on their cleverness – they realize the gnarled mess at their feet has somehow grown larger, with twisting narrative threads that angrily recoil and wrap around themselves. Religion is jumbled with politics, childhood innocence melds with kinky sexuality and supreme beings cruise singles bars, all while the living freely mingle with the dead. Any effort to find the end of the ongepochkit cord is useless; it’s vanished into a new plane of existence."