This Must Be the Place
A retired rock star hunts his father’s nemesis.
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
(R)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In a film most notable for its “splendid strangeness,” the “consummate oddness and utter sincerity” of Sean Penn’s lead performance is the headline draw, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Outfitted in full Gothic regalia and adopting a “high, whispery, and fussily precise” voice, Penn perfectly embodies a 1980s rocker who resists conventional middle age. Currently living in Ireland in quiet domesticity with his wife (Frances McDormand), he helps give the early scenes “a low-key comic vibe” before the story takes up a bunch of other concerns. What happens next “feels like a terrible fit,” said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. When this “trembling Goth” learns that his father has died in the U.S., he travels there to hunt down an Auschwitz guard who was his father’s tormentor. Still, the road trip that results does provide its own pleasures, said Sheri Linden in the Los Angeles Times. If this movie “doesn’t entirely get past its hard-to-buy premise,” Italian director Paolo Sorrentino at least has the courage of his convictions, “spinning many of the story’s contrivances into moments of strange, aching beauty.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
An ingredient in Coca-Cola may be funding Sudan's war
Under the Radar Global trade in gum arabic centres on the African nation – and proceeds bankroll conflict between the army and paramilitary rebels
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Homes for multi-generational families
Feature Featuring a 1900 Jacobean-style mansion in Massachusetts and a 22.5-acre compound in California
By The Week US Published
-
The Week contest: Foot PSA
Puzzles and Quizzes
By The Week US Published