96
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasTold with the stark simplicity of a fairy tale, Sansho The Bailiff demonstrates how compassion can overcome the forces of hatred and oppression, and shows how trying it is to remain decent and humane in an inhospitable world.
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAt some point during the watching, "Sansho the Bailiff" stops being a fable or a narrative and starts being a lament, and by that time it is happening to us as few films do.
- 100Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrThis is one of the greats, and I’m too much in awe of it to say much more than: See it—as often as you can.
- 100EmpireDavid ParkinsonEmpireDavid ParkinsonMoving and atmospheric, this quest tale is among the best of its kind.
- Perhaps Kenji Mizoguchi's greatest achievement, SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a visually mesmerizing picture that pays great and careful attention to the smallest details of nature and environment, highlighted by Mizoguchi's use of the long take and deep-focus shots.
- Its impulses, which are profound but not transcendental, follow an esthetic program that is also a moral progression, and that emerges, with superb lucidity, only from the greatest art.
- 90Time OutTime OutThe twin perspectives yield a film that is both impassioned and elegiac, dynamic in its sense of the social struggle and the moral options, and yet also achingly remote in its fragile beauty. The result is even more remarkable than it sounds.
- 88ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliIt employs the power of tragedy to enrich.
- 88Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenThere’s a reason Sansho the Bailiff is often greeted by critics and audiences with something akin to rapture: It’s a work that divorces the existential riddles of faith from regimented dogma, favoring instead the practical challenges, contradictions, and ambiguities of life as it’s often lived.