Metacritic-Rezensionen

For all of the film’s ideological richness, what Neptune Frost discusses is far from impenetrably abstract. The directors not only hack cinema, a medium historically dominated by white storytellers, to make a statement, but they also reposition its lens to center a fresh crop of artistic voices in a mesmerizing battle cry of a film set to the inextinguishable beat of the drums.

Neptune Frost has a quality of few films: pure, authentic creativity. It can be overwhelming, mudding up the actual narrative of a movie that coasts around genres, topics, and emotions. It confuses more than it explains. But none of that matters. It always has something important to say and a powerful way to say it.

There’s little about it that is realistic, but it has points to make about the real world.

At times befuddling, though adamantly mesmerizing, Neptune Frost fuses searing anti-establishment lyricism with ethereal electronica to create a film and universe worthy of its place alongside the likes of Sun Ra’s Space Is The Place and 2019’s I Snuck off the Slave Ship.

Neptune Frost is a powerful film, clean and digestible while it traffics in metaphors and deploys poetry and philosophy.

The film thrillingly captures the social, economic, political, and material character of Rwanda in the age of global communication.

While Neptune Frost is at no loss for multi-faceted thinking, its development of these concepts too often remains at the surface of meaning. The Black futures envisioned here are largely concerned with aesthetics and, while sonically and visually lush, seem hollow in comparison to the range of their full potential.

Co-directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyma give us a sci-fi dreamscape, a colorful slice of Africa, lovely multi-lingual music, and a “There’s no such thing as a free iPhone” message in their musical. That’s quite the hack they’ve pulled off.

Transmitting a massive download of ideas into one film, there’s no doubt that Williams and Uzeyman have creativity to spare, and they deserve all the support they can get to share it with the world. When you’re this close to the divine, the medium is a pretty-enough message.

A film with sights and sounds you’ve never seen or heard, it’s an intriguing watch with catchy, energetic numbers, even if it doesn’t always land emotionally.