BEFORE THE RAIN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
** 1/2
Time never dies. The circle is not round.
BEFORE THE RAIN is a story in three parts: Words, Faces, and Pictures. The parts form sort of an Escher print and the movie itself is somewhat of an enigma. The movie is from Macedonia and is one of the academy award nominees for 1994 Best Foreign Film.
As one who has traveled to Yugoslavia when (1986) it was peaceful and beautiful and one who even went to the trouble of carefully learning to speak Serbo-Croatian before the trip, this movie held a special fascination for me. Although I went to what is now Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia and not Macedonia, the language, scenery, and people all looked familiar but so tragically sadder.
The story, written and directed by Milcho Manchevski, tells the story of a small village in Macedonia where part of it is populated with Macedonian speaking Orthodox Catholics and part by Albanian speaking Muslims. Every boy above the age of puberty carries an Uzi. Although the village has a deceptively serene look, it is filled with constant and unrelenting hatred and violence.
High above the village is a monastery where a young Orthodox monk (Gregoire Colin) hides a frighten young Albanian girl (Labina Mitevska). The concatenation of a house of God to the violent village provides a strong irony.
Part of the movie takes place in London where a Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalist, played by Rade Serbedzija, wants to go back to his native Macedonia. He asks wants his girlfriend and fellow photographer (Katrin Cartlidge) to leave her husband and go with him to his homeland to film the civil war there.
The cinematography is spectacular in the outdoor scenes. The editing on the other hand was terrible. Sometimes, the scenes dragged along way too long. More frequently the editing was too choppy and made the movie had to follow.
The director had the actors act in a distant almost removed fashion. The quote at the first of the review was used as the glue to link parts of the movie. Its obtuseness was reflected in the script where the images of the war were very moving and yet the characters seemed unreal. I found the movie as a whole interesting and yet inaccessible at the same time.
The movie runs a bit long at 1:55. It is in Macendonian, Albanian, and English with English subtitles for the first two. The movie is unrated, but would have certainly gotten an R for gory, graphic, and realistic violence plus a little sex and female nudity. The violent scenes include people with partially blown off faces and one of a cat being slowly blown to bits with a machine gun. I give the show a mild thumbs up for adults only, and I rate it ** 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
Opinions expressed are solely mine & not meant to reflect my employer's.
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