“Kornél Mundruczó’s Jupiter’s Moon is a messily ambitious and over-extended movie with some great images,” writes the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw: “[L]ike his previous picture White God it leaves behind the somewhat torpid realist mannerisms of his even earlier films such as Delta and skirts the fringes of sci-fi and fantasy. In fact, it is about a Syrian refugee who recovers from bullet-wounds inflicted by a trigger happy immigration cop and realizes he has a superpower. He can fly!”
“This serious-minded, ambitious oddity shoots for the moon of a far-off planet, but it really only finds the grace it’s looking for in its magnificent supple camerawork,” writes Jessica Kiang for Variety. “Jupiter’s Moon wants to take on the immigrant crisis, the Western world’s loss of religious faith, miracles, redemption, terrorism, sacrifice, guilt and modern urban alienation. It is a thriller, a chase movie, a Christian allegory, a family fable about ersatz fathers embracing their frightened would-be sons and a visceral social-issues drama detailing the Hungarian state’s heavy-handed and inhumane response to the refugee crisis. Its title adds yet more to the pile: In the crisp non-explanation that opens the film, we’re told it pertains to the moon Europa, considered by scientists to be among the likeliest prospects in our solar system for a new life-supporting home. But science and space exploration place a very distant second to the questions of faith and religion that are Mundruczó’s main concern.”
“Zsombor Jéger plays Aryan, a young Syrian man who sneaks into Hungary after a perilous journey, only to be gunned down by László (György Cserhalmi), a callous director of a local refugee camp,” writes Tim Grierson for Screen. “But instead of dying, Aryan inexplicably stays alive—and now has the power to levitate. Seeking help from a crooked doctor, Stern (Merab Ninidze), Aryan wants to track down his father, who was separated from him during their entry into Hungary. But Stern has other ideas, convincing him to team up on a series of scams where they’ll trick wealthy, ailing patients into believing that the kid is a miracle worker. As with White God, Jupiter’s Moon wields a clever sci-fi premise in service to topical observations about man’s inhumanity to man.”
“Almost imperceptibly the story shifts into a zanier mode that will include a major car chase, shootouts and SWAT-team action in the grand Budapest Hotel, with a satisfying side of redemption,” adds Barbara Scharres at RogerEbert.com.
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich: “Mundruczó, who combines Alfonso Cuarón’s penchant for long takes with Steven Spielberg’s gift for layering several planes of action in a single shot, can turn the most mundane story beat into a viscerally arresting masterclass of cinematic movement (much credit belongs to his usual cinematographer, Marcell Rév).” Still, “over time the film also exposes the characters as cheap stand-ins for simplistic moral lessons.”
“The film was written by White God’s co-author Kata Weber, an actress-turned-screenwriter who debuted in Mundruczo’s first film, Pleasant Days,” notes Boyd van Hoeij in the Hollywood Reporter. “The biggest weakness of her screenplay is that its connecting tissue and overall narrative arc aren’t as thorough as its set pieces are creative and beautifully conceived.”
At Cineuropa, Fabien Lemercier finds that “the heavy burden of the subject matter ends up weighing the film down and playing on a fairly repetitive loop with slight dramatic variations.”
“Even though it’s not at all clear what Jupiter’s Moon is attempting to say or do by the time its gun-popping finale comes around,” writes Little White Lies’ David Jenkins, “it takes no political sides when it comes to the issue of global human traffic and the value of a spiritual life. This careful fudging of anything that could get it pegged as promoting one position over the other might make Mundruczó a perfect candidate for a Hollywood run out—especially as, above all else, this appears to take many of its narrative cues from that Tinseltown perennial: the superhero origin story.”
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