Praying With Lior.

"No film critic would dare print a negative word about a film as well-intentioned as Ilana Trachtman's affable, purposely enriching documentary Praying with Lior; the reassuring news is that they'd have no reason to," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

Updated through 2/2.

"Shot over three years in a close-knit Jewish Reconstructionist community in Philadelphia, Praying With Lior documents the extraordinary life of Lior Liebling, a rabbi's son with Down syndrome and an obsessive love of prayer," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "Patiently and delicately, Ms Trachtman teases out the tricky dynamics of a family dealing with a disabled child."

"Subject matter notwithstanding, the film stands as essentially the most finely made home video ever released into theaters, and though budgetary limitations were likely the cause for the film's low-rent aesthetic, its nature is one perfectly complementary to the material," writes Rob Humanick in Slant.

"Ms Trachtman's film is as much about its title subject as it is about the hundreds who gather to celebrate his entry into adulthood," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun. "As we watch him jubilantly climb onto the bima, welcomed by smiles, cheers, and tears, Praying with Lior does more than offer us a portrait of a special young man. It discards the clichés and condescension of so many mainstream religious films to help us see the power of faith in action."

"When Lior finally brings the room to its knees, nailing the Torah reading at his Bar Mitzvah, it is a highly emotional, affecting moment - truly an underdog weeper for the ages," writes Michelle Orange at the Reeler. "I only wish the 80 minutes that preceded it had been as powerful."

Earlier: Julia Wallace in the Voice.

Updates: "I too have prayed with Lior," writes Stuart Klawans in the first of hopefully many pieces for Nextbook. "Christianity, I suspect, is the influence behind much of the current movement toward Jewish spirituality," he proposes:

Experience persuades me that Trachtman has brought [Lior] before American Jews at the least likely moment and the most opportune: when large numbers of ostensibly smart and successful people don't believe in much of anything, yet yearn so much for some kind of spiritual experience that they're willing to believe through someone. If this means that Lior is being used, then there's no harm done, so far as I can see. Trachtman's documentary shows how this boy - now a young man - has gained from the loving Jewish community around him, just as that community has gained from him. To the degree that movie audiences constitute a community, that circle of mutual support may now expand.

"Ultimately, Praying With Lior is a film more about family dynamics than spiritual ones, though the two can't really be separated in the Liebling household," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

Updates, 2/2: At Cinematical, Nick Schager finds the film "far less interested in sermonizing or converting disbelievers as it is in showing organized religion and family to be similar social systems of inclusion. Which is not, however, to say that this heartfelt film is a one-note sunshiny tale, since director Trachtman has the good sense to observe Lior and those around him with equal measures of effusive empathy and journalistic inquisitiveness, capturing not only Lior's vociferous piousness but also the complex familial dynamics that surround him. Refusing to pigeonhole or preach, it touches upon numerous points of interest - the difficulties of raising special-needs children, the emotional support supplied by religious rites of passage and everyday customs, the selflessness of parents and siblings - and, in doing so, provides a complex, compelling depiction of the intrinsic relationship between love for God and one's kin."

"[I]n the most effective moments of Lachtman's film I basically didn't think about his family's Jewishness or what I did and didn't understand about their theological beliefs," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "They seemed like Americans wrestling with loss, hope and uncertainty."

Posted by dwhudson at February 1, 2008 7:14 AM