Here is the Dust, but where is the Horse?

Film practicing – Dust:

#4 The story of DUST is placed within two time periods, in tree different civilizations, with few different languages, with four – visually – completely opposite film means. The Author of the film, with his attitude, author’s expression and means (generally), forms three stories and he links and interlaces them, hiding and then revealing many things, etc. There is much of a dream within the film, also. It corresponds with the spaghetti westerns, even with the music accent, that links to the main characters, like in the westerns of Sergio Leone. The end of the film must be compared with the ending of the WILD BUNCH Sam Peckinpah. Quite complicated. Very complicated – in the film-directing conception and highly ambitious as a high budget production.
But, let’s start with the synopsis of the film:
New York. A black man (Edge) is breaking & entering into some flat. A very old woman – Angela, 100 years old, seizes him under the treat of large handgun and she greets him with the sentence: please to meet you, hope you guess my name4F. And she starts to tell him a story. And she keeps mentioning the great amount of money here-somewhere around, very close. The story she tells brings us back in time of the Wild West, west of Pecos (and in town of Pecos, if you recall, the judge was the “merciful and sweet-talking” Roy Bin). Two brothers, Luke and Elijah, bot very fast with the gun, fell in love with the same girl: the French prostitute Lillite. The older one, Luke, we don’t know why, runs to Europe. On the luxury ship, we meet Freud (again we don’t know why), and in Paris, we meet the films made by Manaki Brothers. While watching these films, Luke understands that his future is in Macedonia, a place where civilization hasn’t reached yet – the alternative Wild West. A Heaven for gangsters and gunman. In Macedonia he raids together with a bloodthirsty gang, bounty-hunting the Macedonian Rebel-Emperor – the Teacher, the protector of the oppressed Macedonian people, with a great reward for his head, offered by the Ottoman official authorities. Then Angela gets a heart attack. Edge gets her to the “St. Luke”?!) hospital. The story goes on. Elijah, who came to Macedonia and joined the Turk bounty-hunters, finds – and shots Luke. Luke is saved and nursed by some pregnant Macedonian woman Neda. Understandable, she’s none else, but the Teacher’s wife. Through few hallucinations, we can comprehend that Luke had an affaire with Lillite. – That’s why his little brother is mad, the audience can guess. Edge must get money, because of the crooked policemen who are after the money he owes to somebody, we don’t know who. Angela still tells her story. The Ottoman army gets he Teacher and chops his head off. The Teacher’s village is burnt down. Luke gets the offer to revenge the Teacher, and in exchange he gets a bag full with gold coins. He refuses to do that, but he takes the money (?). He meets Elijah again. Luke, then, understands that Lillite made a suicide. Edge finds the money, the Luke’s gold coins from Macedonia. Angela dies, not finishing the story. Edge is rich now, and he does his revenge upon the dirty cops. After that, he takes the Angela’s ashes to Macedonia by plane. In the plane, he re-tells the story to the girl sitting next to him. In the end of his version of the story, Luke gets back to the village, and in ten minutes of shooting he kills all the Turks and the Geek Orthodox priest. He also kills Corto Maltese. Neda is also dead, but he gave birth dying. It’s Angela, whose ashes he carries in a adequate pot in his lap. At the end of the battle Luke has been killed. Elijah takes the baby and he throws he coin what to do with it. The coin says he takes the baby to America.
#5 So, here we have three stories:
1. The story Angela and Edge, and Edge with the crooked cops (time present, New York and the flight New York – Europe);
2. The story of the brothers Luke and Elijah and the French prostitute (time past; location Wild West, and even Wilder Macedonia);
3. The Teacher, Luke and Neda (time past, location Macedonia).
The times shift a lot, presented (most often) by flashbacks. Sometimes, the time makes double leap backwards. Macedonia and Wild West at one hand, and the urban New York, on another. The task would be: to link this two stories – in any interesting way, with the necessary suspense; to diverge the times and locations even visually; to require a music applicable in all of the three stories, two epochs and three civilizations; to make a satisfactory respect to the film industry idolatry, to be original, and to create a narration never seen before; to present Macedonia and the Macedonians as good characters; to provoke emotions of fear, sorrow and empathy as audience’s respond; to be intertextual with the literary influences, to act intellectually, to be said that we did loved the rock’n’roll but now it’s dead, to be moderate in the humor, to respect the history and the historical facts; to say that at the Balkans – the conflict between the East and West goes on and on… As I said: ambitious.
That is already seen in the film history, but… Often, films are consisted of more than three stories. Sometimes, those stories aren’t even linked in any way – those kinds of films are called omnibus films. Mostly, those are films made by the principle: different director for each film story in the omnibus film. Sometimes, there is one film director, who gathers few stories with the different main characters in each story that, hopefully, somewhere at the end of the film – merge with other stories, like in MM’s first film BEFORE THE RAIN. Sometimes, the stories are conditioned by time leaps. Often, the stories are semantically link by some objects/subjects, as taxi vehicle, gun or some character, for instance. There are cases when one can’t determine the way the stories are linked. That method is the most delicate. But – we’ve already knew that.
Times often mix. In that purpose, the screen-writers even invented the time machines. Time can be altered even with the case when the narration follows some object/subject in a long time period. Or, you can shift times with hibernating and awakening your hero. The Forest Gump character is another kind of film time-shifter. A 100-years old narrator is one the optimal variants. It was seen in the LITTLE BIG MAN. In that film, the narrator revokes his memories for the journalist’s sake. This approach, in its very start is in advantage at the sentimental kind of films. We all feel for the elder people. And if we build the (elder) character in a way that the character of theold lady in DUST: a character with a rebel attitude, a character that is quoting “Stones”, familiar with famous people, the character who (in its memory coffin) keeps the photos of Jagger and Josip Broz Tito, with skills of handling guns, the character that smokes cigarettes through the oxygen mask of the respiration machine, and finally – with a sophisticated sense of humor – then, the producers gain a 100% success.
#6 In DUST, the time linkage was made more in a filmic way, which means – more motivated, but not spontaneous in same way. Do you watch cartoons? Of course. What abut those at “Warner Bros”, with Duffy and Bugsy? When „Warner” wants to recycle their already shown cartoons in order to gain extra profit, then Bugsy would be captured by the father of the spoiled brat Abadabba. So, in the castle in the middle of the desert, Bugsy would have to read stories to Abadabba. It’s a very good motivation. Between every two stories (short cartoons) Abadabba and Bugsy chase and outsmart each other. The Bugsy’s stories are, the most often, paraphrased and ironic versions of already well-known stories. This kind of constructing a story corresponds with the story/stories in DUST, where the roles of Bugsy and Abadabba are swapped. So, if we merge Duffy & Bugsy Cartoons and a film as the LITTLE BIG MAN, we get – DUST. But, it also doesn’t matter. Why? Because it is a genre-defined film, and we can always take the Postmodern as an excuse.
So we come to the question of the suspense (see: Triffault, „Hitchcock“, Film Institute in Belgrade, 1987). MM is the film-man, from head to heals. An erudite. His scenario has to hide something, something that audience wouldn’t know until the film’s finale. That’s also the rule in the spaghetti westerns, and it isn’t invented and implemented in the film by chance. That rule is thought in order to keep the audience interested until the very finish of the film, and to put the accent and semantic point at the end of the film deed. In DUST, (Lucky) Luke runs to Macedonia. It’s very vaguely supposed that the conflict is about love and adultery, and the audience patiently waits in wonder… what ever for is the reason for the brothers’ quarrel? When the film reveals that it was because of an adultery and the girl’s suicide, the film is already in its second half, with one bloody battle (with duration of 30 minutes) already shown, and one a little shorter, then a few dreams/visions/hallucinations and agonies also shown, etc. But it seems that to the audience (already) nothing matters any more. And what to say about Edge? He’s under pressure to find money, because with every day he loses one part of his body, until he finds the money he owe. The money is the narrative reason of the film in this urban part of the film, that one – in New York. Maybe the most successful part of this film. Here, almost everything is I function. A little drama. The granny Angela is interesting character, TV archetype, but still convincing; the crooked cops are a great thought plot, they could be the Mafia, anyway, but MM knows that’s a sterile cliché and he chooses the different and better solution; the young black Edge is in contrapunct with the old white Angela, and that also functions on the level of the inevitable comedy relief character, especially the part when she introduces him as her nephew. Still, the part in the hospital (same as the Angela’s character), to me (subjectively!) it was too TV-like, but it’s the segment of the directing procedure, as well of the camera and editing means. And I can say that the suspense is lost with the oversized (in number) fragments of the story.