Everybody Knows

A soap-operatic family drama with a stellar cast. Farhadi’s talent was wasted on this. (07/05/2018)

Asghar Farhadi recounts a very slow family drama, in which there are so many characters that very quickly, you lose track of who is related to whom, and why their presence in the story even matters. Under the pressure of tragic circumstances, they all reopen old wounds and stir up an atmosphere that was peaceful until then. When one of the characters reveals their secret during the second half of the film, it’s been a long time since the viewer figured it out. The whole thing is delivered without the tiniest hint of suspense or interesting dialogues, and without any memorable scene. And when there’s not even a spark between Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, it means something must be wrong somewhere. [KVIFF 2018] (07/01/2018)

The first half hour with a lengthy wedding fails to introduce all of the roughly fifteen essential characters and the relationships between them (which you will slowly begin to understand later). The film then tells a story about a kidnapping that resembles an Agatha Christie detective story, but without a detective. The rest of the film deals with family ties and old wrongs rather than anything being investigated, but not knowing the abductors' identity at least brings an element of tension and uncertainty to the process. Thanks to the quality actors, it's not bad, but qualitatively it's on a completely different level than the director's previous Iranian films. (07/08/2018)

The atmosphere of the wedding in the Spanish countryside drew me into the plot and then I was completely absorbed by this family drama. While I can imagine a more elaborate ending to the whole story, Javier Bardem's natural, almost minimalist acting prevented me from rating the film with just three stars. He managed to embody the role of a man who, due to his kindness, ultimately lost everything in such a way that I truly believed in the weight of the world on his shoulders. I don't want to offend Penélope Cruz, who was also great, but Javier outshined her this time. (75%) (12/11/2020)