Rotten
A talented but terminally parched piece of literary cinema.
Variety Staff, Variety
Overview
The story of a mentally anguished high school history teacher going through a complete reassessment of his life. His method for reassessing his life is to narrate it to his class and interweave in it three generations of his family's history.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
58%
Tomatometer
Fresh
With a dazed, frightened expression and the keen sense that his life is coming undone, Mr. Irons's Tom becomes a rivetingly sad figure, and a sharp focus for the film's many reveries.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
Fresh
Swift's elegant, descriptive phrases coexist inelegantly with classroom vulgarisms. And there almost making it all work as a portrait in despondency and realization is Irons, a walking requiem to lost innocence.
Rita Kempley, Washington Post
Rotten
The strange fact about "Waterland" is the way the performances and the dialogue are worthier than the story itself.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh
It's a brave endeavour, held together by Robert Elswit's poetic photography, and by Irons' authoritative impression of the crumbling desperation behind the chalk-dusted facade of a pensive history man.
Time Out
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