Iceman's reviews
Media reviews
The Hollywood Reporter
Cinematography, production design and costume design all help create the very believable word that Kelab inhabits, even if the digital cinematography still can?t quite render fire as beautifully as celluloid can. A traditional score is one of the few outside elements brought in to help tell this otherwise non-subtitled tale of survival and retribution.
Screen Daily
There is no dialogue we would understand, the narrative itself is straightforward and yet we do care and are convinced by the world he depicts. Jurgen Vogel?s presence as the grizzled, grief-stricken Kelab is a major factor in that conviction. There is more to the character than grief and rage.
Time Out
There?s an enthralling depth of detail here. Randau is determined to present Neolithic life faithfully, right down to the language. Everyone speaks Rhaetic and you won?t understand a word of it because there are no subtitles. Not that you?d need them; dialogue is sparse and you get the gist anyway.
Variety
One of the downsides of the undeniably brave formal choice to reject subtitling is that it?s difficult to get to know personalities, and it?s even hard to work out which guttural word might be a name. Add to this the feature-obscuring costuming and styling, and DP Jakob Bejnaworicz?s pictorial framing which is often set some distance away from the characters (the better to include more of the dramatic surroundings), and it?s tough not only to invest much emotion in them, but to differentiate between them at all.
Caimán Cuadernos de Cine
This fusion of elements results in an attractive work from the technical and formal point of view, but [it's] somewhat conventional in its narrative.
The Guardian
It's a reasonably engaging movie, but based on very familiar filmic archetypes.