
An aging painter living in exile returns to his southern hometown, where his family endured generations of racial violence, to bury his estranged sister. Once there he begins to fantasize the people around him as a series of vignettes and portraits in order to bury the pain and find something beautiful to feel, however strange and fleeting, at odds but never too far away from the scars of the past.... (Full plot summary below)
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An aging painter living in exile returns to his southern hometown, where his family endured generations of racial violence, to bury his estranged sister. Once there he begins to fantasize the people around him as a series of vignettes and portraits in order to bury the pain and find something beautiful to feel, however strange and fleeting, at odds but never too far away from the scars of the past.
Leave your thoughts about Constellation.
| NewsdayJohn AndersonMoody pictures, swollen music and portentous dialogue are all great, but they need to have a narrative propping them up. |
| VarietyRobert KoehlerExceptionally strong cast is pictures beating heart. |
| Washington PostDesson ThomsonThe central story, in which Helms has to make up his mind whether to attend his sister's funeral, is too limited a conflict to hang a movie on. Ultimately, audiences will have to satisfy themselves with the collective presence of these actors and the movie's obviously good-hearted intentions. |
| New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanWriter-director Jordan Walker-Pearlman can't adequately handle either of his tasks: The script is as sappy as the direction is awkward. Fortunately, he was smart enough to enlist a cast of pros who can ably sidestep the project's many potholes. |
| TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThere are effective scenes and powerful performances scattered among long sequences in which various members of the family gaze into space as they contemplate the burden of the past, walk aimlessly through Atlanta or have odd encounters with strangers. |
| Film Journal InternationalFrank LoveceI'm nodding off just thinking about the long, static close-ups and endless scenes of people walking and sitting and doing nothing. |
| Entertainment WeeklyScott BrownDeeply odd films are often deeply personal ones, and Constellation, a dazed, inchoate drama about a mixed-race Alabama family, tells a story that's clearly close to the heart of writer-director Jordan Walker-Pearlman. |
| L.A. WeeklyScott FoundasOnly Williams makes any real emotional connection: I'm not sure I'd call his performance good, but there's something fascinating about seeing the man once heralded as "the black Clark Gable" three decades removed from heartthrob status, heavy and sullen-looking, weighed down by the burdens of time and age. |
| Newark Star-LedgerStephen WhittyThere are too many characters too sketchily defined, and some of the relationships are pure contrivances. |
| The New York TimesMatt Zoller SeitzIf earnestness equaled skill, Constellation would be a classic. |