Metacritic reviews

It insists that it's in moments of small talk, between life's larger events, that one finds vitality.

The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger is a challenging, sometimes poignant engagement with the man and his work.

As a collection, The Seasons in Quincy certainly hangs together; it’s also an absolutely inspired way of approaching its subject. If the outcome is a little uneven; well, that’s the price that sometimes has to be paid.

Taken together, the shorts offer some scraps on Berger the man and the artist and thinker without really supplying a full overview, while also exploring some of his main preoccupations in ways that would benefit from at least some prior knowledge of his work.

Some prior interest in Berger would help, but even newcomers should find this an infectious portrait of independent thought and living.

The Seasons in Quincy is most compelling when we and it listens to Berger or captures him listening to someone else.

A warm and heartfelt but too often desultory and disorganized tribute to the down-to-earth intellectual.

The film can be rough going for those who know little of Berger’s work. That’s especially true of the second part, a stupefying collage about Berger’s home in rural Quincy, France.

Swinton’s warm, unassuming direction generates an intimacy that does much to compensate for the overarching project’s wispiness — although even her clear affection for Berger can’t ultimately make “The Seasons in Quincy” more than a for-aficionados-only companion piece to his pre-existing paintings and writing.