Variety
“Which one?” is the obvious question prompted by the title in “The Childhood of a Leader,” a overweening, maddening but not inconsiderable directorial debut for actor Brady Corbet, which plays as something of a straight-faced parody of a well-upholstered historical biopic. For anyone going in blind, it won’t take long to deduce that the nascent leader in question is a product of Corbet’s heavily Sartre-fueled imagination: a toxic pawn in a grueling bad-parenting parable that only reaches its rather inevitable punchline in the final frames.
Empire
A historical study set partly in a fictional world, 27 year-old Brady Corbet’s directing debut is impressive, unsettling and elusive. It’s a family drama in which the family in question barely functions and a period parable about the rise of fascism that feels seriously current.
