Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York, distraught by the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.... (Full plot summary below)
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Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York, distraught by the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.
Leave your thoughts about To Dust.
| SlashfilmMarshall ShafferRöhrig and Broderick work remarkably well in tandem throughout To Dust, with the former providing the sincerity and the latter bringing some levity. |
| TheWrapYolanda MachadoA unique take on one of the most painful and important parts of being human, the film is original and honest. Even knowing very little about the traditions of Hasidic Judaism, it was easy to relate to the very human element of finding a connection that ultimately leads to healing. |
| Original-CinJim SlotekAn odd, sweet, dryly funny, existential and slightly blasphemous buddy-movie, in which an Orthodox cantor, grieving his wife’s death, seeks the help of a pot-smoking college professor to understand what becomes of a corpse. |
| Austin ChronicleSteve DavisThe real delight here, however, is Broderick’s mensch, a middle-aged man painfully aware that he’s become a loser. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreSnyder and co-writer Jason Begue paint a delightful alternative portrait of Hasidism and its practioners, going beyond the rituals and beyond respectful mockery, showing us foul-mouthed kids and an insular world clumsily at odds with the culture they’ve settled in. |
| RogerEbert.comMark DujsikReligion can provide some solace, but it can also complicate matters. Science can explain the natural processes, but even then, it cannot account for every detail in every situation. To Dust is about those contradictions and, in the end, about the ultimate one: that, to some questions, the only logical and spiritual answer is that there isn't one — except whatever we make of it. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDirected and co-written by Shawn Snyder, To Dust is a dark but not bleak comedy, an oddly effective love story and also a classic buddy movie, albeit presented within a framework I don’t we’ve ever seen before in the genre. It’s also lovely and offbeat and kind of wonderful. |
| Film ThreatLorry KiktaThis is a very inventive, original story, in a cinematic landscape that sometimes seems bereft of such things. |
| Screen DailyDavid D'ArcyIf tenderness is deployed to ease Shmuel’s grieving, those are not the scenes which give To Dust its special pungency, or what make you laugh. This film is at its best when it goes for the gut. |
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleThe movie could use a little more energy — this is Paul Mazursky territory, after all, not Andrei Tarkovsky — but in its sick-but-sweet attempt to reclaim grief from the trappings of tradition, To Dust is its own well-measured godsend. |
