Dust.

"Over the past three decades, the German cine-essayist Hartmut Bitomsky has staked out a position at once lofty and material - making coolly detached documentaries that address subjects like the history of the autobahn or the nature of the wind in cinema," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "Devoting itself to the tiniest 'visible subject' that a film can have, Bitomsky's Dust manages to be philosophical without seeming pedantic."

Updated through 12/5.

"After a while you may wonder if dust is an especially German obsession, or if different versions of this movie might have been made in other countries," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Comprehensive though it is, Dust feels like a preliminary investigation, a pilot for a multi-episode, hundred-hour series that would track dust all around the world.... You will have a new appreciation of those motes swirling in the projector beam, which have been haunting movie theaters for more than a century, waiting for their turn on screen."

"In style, Hartmut Bitomsky's Dust is a kissing cousin of Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Our Daily Bread and Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death, but this 'inquiry into one of life's smallest realities' (per the film's press notes) never feels philosophically uncommitted, nor does it scan as neo-colonialist exploitation," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Essentially a hypochondriac's worst nightmare, it reminds us of Mother Nature's totalitarianism."

"Bitomsky's Herzogian voice-over provides deadpan relief from Dust's sometimes tedious and progressively scarier sections covering asbestos, 9/11, coal mining and the Iraq War," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine.

"Throughout the film, one might be forgiven for wondering when the jokes might come in," writes Sara Vilkomerson in the New York Observer. "After all, mysterious unidentified space dust or not, we're still talking about flying specks that for the most part we can't see. Surely, we can all take a moment to consider the innate hilarity in a movie about dust? But the (very German) Mr Bitomsky never once breaks from his bromidic delivery, to the point where we actually looked around our living room to see if we were being punk'd by our superiors. We can't honestly say we have a new appreciation of dust after getting through this one, but it's good to know that somebody out there is keeping a (microscopic) eye on the situation. Oh, and if you want to skip the film because you think you know how to deal with your own personal dust situation, here's a hint: you don't. Dust always wins."

At Film Forum through Tuesday.

Update, 12/4: "The story of the pervasive particle, according to Bitomsky, suffers greatly from the enormous task he's undertaken: to turn mundane data into big ideas about people and their place in nature," writes Simon Abrams in the New York Press. "If you holistically buy Bitomsky's spiel, you could potentially mull over anything forever and never be done - because dust is that ultimate anything."

Update, 12/5: "At times, Dust is a little like one of those basic-cable shows that reveal how things are made, as Bitomsky hangs out in laboratories and factories, watching paint-mixing or scientists studying plants." Noel Murray at the AV Club: "At other times, Dust is more probative, as Bitomsky considers the dangers of radioactivity, or what happened to the New Yorkers who inhaled the dust of the wreckage on 9/11. And while Dust is too shapeless, and often a little dry - no pun intended - it's frequently striking."

"The director, a serious mind who's made films about the Autobahn and airplanes, seems distracted by minutiae," writes Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. "His Dust is a real chore."

Posted by dwhudson at December 3, 2008 6:25 AM