Goodbye, 20th Century! (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
"The future is as screwed up as the past."
Starring Lazar Ristovski. Not Rated (the equivalent of a strong R, for gory violence and an explicit sex scene).
Goodbye, 20th Century is one of only six films produced in the Republic of Macedonia. It's the only one of the six that I have seen and it hasn't made me especially eager to see more. It's a frenetic, nonsensical doo-hickey of a science fiction movie that makes no effort to be at all coherent and, as such, is a big mess. It's utterly pointless -- or maybe it's just me. Either way, I'm at a loss.
The film is composed of three vignettes. The first plays like a pornographic Tuck Everlasting. In a post-apocalyptic society, a man is condemned to eternal life until he frees himself of the curse by having sex with his sister. Or something. The second is brief and is "set" at the end of the 19th century. This one might have something to do with someone marrying his own sister. Or something. The last one concerns a deranged Santa Claus on New Year's Eve 1999 and ends in a bloodbath and the words "Goodbye, 20th Century!"
Or something. I don't know. Maybe it would have all become clearer on repeat viewing, but I wasn't going to go through that. The fact of the matter is, to a one-time viewer not familiar with Macedonian cinema, Goodbye, 20th Century makes absolutely no sense. Lines and characters seem to come out of nowhere, without any apparent thought behind them. The running theme of incest is at best curious and at worst repulsive; either way, why it's there remains a mystery. The film also tries to interweave the three stories, but the result is even more disjointed. There may well be some ideas brimming underneath the surface here, in which case they simply never see the light of day.
>From a purely technical perspective, this is a reasonably well-made movie. Action scenes are filmed with an effectively surrealistic style and there is enough deft camerawork to justify the filmmakers being in the business. The sets are gorgeously bleak and they don't reek of a low budget. I also like the way the film's finale was staged and filmed, though I didn't really understand that either. Goodbye, 20th Century has enough visual panache that, if coupled with a good plot, which it is laughing, it would be a fair contender for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year.
I can't help but think that there was something profound that directors Darko Mitrevski and Aleksandar Popovski were trying to tell us here. If only I knew what it was. Before I can perceive understated messages I have to at least get a jist of the main story line and with this film I wasn't even fully successful there. In fact, nobody can be expected to understand the theme of a movie before they figure out what it is about. That should be the #1 piece of advice at film schools everywhere.
There is no way I can completely dismiss this film considering its technical proficiency and the nagging possibility that, um, I didn't get it. But my argument stands: to most American filmgoers, Goodbye, 20th Century will remain a mystery. The story never came together sufficiently to work on any level other than the visual.
Grade: C-
©1999 Eugene Novikov
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