V13

‘“There are films that prod at the intellect, others that wrestle with moral complexity, and then there’s V13, Richard Ledes’ ambitious and often provocative adaptation of Alain Didier-Weill’s play Vienne 1913. The film doesn’t so much invite you in as it does hurl you headlong into the dense terrain of psychoanalysis, history, and philosophical inquiry, a kind of cinematic fever dream where time is porous, and the spectres of the past peer out with unsettling relevance.”‘

‘“As if to say the past and the present often blend together. Things have changed, but have they really? This is V13's central message, making it a daring act of filmmaking in the politically divisive 2020s era. Nonetheless, Ledes' adaptation has a lot to say; its weighty discussions surrounding human souls, Marxism, God, unconscious knowledge, incest, Medusa and Athena, et cetera, are sometimes — here's that word again — dizzying.”‘

‘“Layered and deeply learned, V13 transplants the tinderbox of 1913 Austria to a setting at once familiar and unsettling. We needn’t reach too far to see how the Pan-Germanists of the past resemble Proud Boys today, or detect in Hugo or Adolf someone who may now identify as an incel and lurk in the no-longer-so-deep corners of the internet.”‘