Resurrecting Hassan
4.38/5
Based on 40 votes and 14 reviews.
Please rate between 1 to 5 stars
September 24, 2017
C'est un film important!
September 24, 2017
Intimate portrayal of the complexity of a family. Beautifully shot. The sound design is something you don't normally experience documentary.
September 24, 2017
I didn't like it but my mom did.
September 24, 2017
I had a hard time watching this movie but I'm glad I did.
September 24, 2017
La famille Harting n’est pas comme les autres, et le fait que ses membres sont tous non-voyants constitue la chose la moins singulière de ce clan. Sur le trottoir ou dans le métro, Denis, le père, Peggy, la mère, et Lauviah, leur fille, chantent à pleins poumons et attirent tous les regards. Leur intensité et leur franchise devant la caméra de Carlo Guillermo Proto apparaissent infinies, dévoilant des pans troublants et tragiques de leur existence, dont la mort par noyade du fils Hassan. Or, non seulement ils cultivent sa mémoire, mais ils rêvent aussi de sa résurrection, une entreprise métaphysique qui nous laisse à la fois perplexes et admiratifs. Ce portrait familial s’impose par son authenticité, sa chaleureuse proximité et l’abandon avec lequel les trois protagonistes se livrent, sans fard et sans faux-fuyants.
September 24, 2017
Beautiful portrait of a family that doesn't judge but rather demonstrates their undying spirit.
September 24, 2017
Too intense for me.
September 24, 2017
At first glance I didn't like this film. After talking about it with my friend, I realized that it wasn't that I didn't like this film but that I didn't like how it made me feel. Confronting this level of intensity wasn't something I was prepared for but I'm glad I did.
September 24, 2017
An intimate documentary portrait of the Hartings, a blind Canadian family who make their living singing in Montreal’s metro stations. Denis, Peggy and their daughter Lauviah are haunted by the tragic drowning of seven-year-old Hassan, the only sighted member of their family. Unable to accept his loss, they have become cult followers of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi. He claims that people can rise from the dead and believes Hassan’s resurrection is the only way of restoring the family’s happiness. Initially united by grief, the family members’ paths soon diverge. Given intimate access, the camera unflinchingly captures events as they unfold, from intense resurrection sessions with a Grabovoi disciple to violent domestic arguments and moments of profound despair. What is an intense slice of cinéma vérité is a unique family portrait.
September 24, 2017
Denis Harting, his childhood sweetheart Peggy, and their daughter Lauviah busk together as a capella singers on the Montreal metro. Peggy prefers performing outside to inside: "It's more fun and it's more money. And people are a bit goofier." She says this to her secret boyfriend, Philou, during one of their transatlantic phone calls, which she's becoming increasingly brazen about. If you're going to pity Denis, pity him for getting cuckolded, not because he's blind. After all, so are Peggy and Lauviah. Lauviah had a brother, Hassan, who died in a drowning accident at the age of six. Denis tells a radio interviewer his death made headlines, so I looked it up and discovered that Hassan was not also blind. His parents donated his corneas--not to Lauviah, alas. As I type this, I'm wondering about the ethical propriety of that, were it medically possible. Like any work of direct cinema, Resurrecting Hassan raises as many questions as it answers, though it goes the extra mile in pursuing objective truthfulness by narrowing the camera's field of vision with staggeringly intimate close-ups. It's not Derek Jarman's Blue, but this blotting out of their surroundings does foster empathy for the Hartings, who are quite often literally the blind leading the blind. (They walk the streets in a linked huddle and assist one another at home.) There's a conversation to be had, in a longer, more considered review, about whether scenes like Lauviah--who additionally has some form of autism--petting her cat wrong constitute exploitation. Personally, I was grateful the movie didn't lapse into inspiration porn, and I tend to think of all cinéma vérité as exploitation anyway. (Besides, it's a poignant moment, as the two most isolated figures in the house beg for mutual compassion.) The question to ask is if pointing a camera at this family is cynical, and that's an issue compounded by their being followers of Grigory Grabovoy, a Russian faith healer who claims that human organs can be regen