Recensioni di Metacritic

This portrait of the artist as an old woman is a gentle-hearted gem, as profoundly subtle as it is subtly profound.

This is the rare Morris movie that feels led by the personality of its star figure, in this case Dorfman’s wry positivity and love of what she does, rather than his need to probe.

It’s an endlessly charming film focused on a woman whose view of life is one to be envied.

Not only is it an affectionate and personal film – the subject, Elsa Dorfman, is a long-standing friend and Morris’s emotional investment in her story is evident in every frame. It’s also far more informal in approach than his normal forthright technique.

Dorfman declares that she was never a media or critics’ darling. “I was at the bottom of the list,” she says when talking about her position in the ranks of modern photography. This film will convince you that she definitely deserves a higher position in the pantheon.

It would be inaccurate to say The B-Side only scratches the surface of Dorfman, but this lovely portrait takes pains to adopt her mindset, finding the beauty that pervades an artist’s life. As a result, Morris is offering his own kind B-side—not better than the main work, but a delightful alternative take.

Ms. Dorfman, bless her open heart, has been captivated by the surfaces of the people she shoots, of how they seem. “I am totally not interested in capturing their souls.”

Errol Morris films Dorfman and her work with a rapt attentiveness that maps the nostalgic and regretful stirrings of her soul.

If this doc is sometimes elegiac in tone, there is nothing mournful about it. Dorfman is too much the odd-ball optimist, telling funny anecdotes – a lifelong friendship with poet Allen Ginsberg began when she was a young publishing-house secretary and he asked for some mysterious thing called “the can” – and tossing off provocative insights into the nature of photography and life.

The B-Side feels a tad overextended—but it’s a pleasure to see a warm, creative, and not even remotely evasive individual in front of his camera for a change.