The FlatMovie Reviews

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    San Francisco Chronicle |

    The movie feels more like a thriller and a mystery than a documentary. Perhaps someday, someone will be inspired to dramatize this astonishing story. Read full review

  • 91
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    I will salute the deftness and intelligence with which Goldfinger observes the reactions of the living to the revelations of the dead. Read full review

  • 90
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    What makes The Flat mesmerizing is its wealth of historical detail. What makes it universal is what it says about families everywhere - that children, being children, don't want to know what their parents are up to, and that grown-ups, being human, don't want to credit troubling facts that conflict with what they need to believe. Read full review

  • 88
    Washington Post | Michael O'Sullivan

    A quietly brilliant study in cognitive dissonance, The Flat is a documentary look at Holocaust denial, but not the kind you might think. Read full review

  • 88
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    Is something being hidden? No. It's more that something doesn't want to be known. Read full review

  • 80
    New York Daily News | Elizabeth Weitzman

    Ultimately, this is not a film about one specific event but about human nature - most notably, the instincts toward denial and delusion, acceptance and forgiveness. From start to finish, revelations abound. Read full review

  • 75
    Boston Globe | Wesley Morris

    There's something touching about the way Goldfinger obeys his moral compass. He doesn't seem at all happy with that luxury. It's a burden by a more extravagant name. Read full review

  • 63
    St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Joe Williams

    The Holocaust must never be forgotten, but like many well-intentioned documentaries, The Flat derives more power from the implicit strength of the subject than from the explicit choices of the director. Read full review

  • 63
    Slant Magazine | Joseph Jon Lanthier

    Accusation is the rhetoric of outrage, and Arnon Goldfinger can't bring himself to experience even conservative anger, regardless of its appropriateness. Read full review

  • 40
    Time Out New York |

    The Flat details his efforts to understand this unusual situation, and although the film suggests that his relatives may have maintained this odd friendship as a denial of their homeland's betrayals, there's only so deep Goldfinger can dig. Read full review

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