#7 The most problematic part of the story is that one in Macedonia. The place that should keep all of the answers of the film story/stories. The questions are: what is the meaning of the photos in the Angela’s room, why Luke runs away (besides his character and his way of life); does Angela have any money or not; how the story about the brothers will end in Macedonia… Instead of that, the film i.e. the director presents to us three confusedly realized battles (the few original ideas aren’t enough considering the wasted gunpowder (the same can be said about the wasted film minutes).
And if we consider the story of the peaceful Macedonian village and the pregnant Macedonian young woman Neda (the Teacher’s wife) who treats and cures (Lucky) Luke – in between, then the confusion is even larger. Is she in love with Luke or not? One can’t tell. Is here a different (hidden fourth) story or not? Luke goes to fight, his brother shots him, Neda cures him, the Teacher is caught and killed. The gold enters the game, Luke tries to save the bride, but he fails. After that, some dreams, agonies; the film director in one (or two?) phantasmagorical sequences announces the Luke’s death. This part (most probably) should function as a film-drama sequence: a chase where everybody chases everyone. The airplanes appear as an omen of the new era. When they appear (the new age), there is no place for the cowboys. In some other films, the new era comes with the automobiles. Cable Hog died in a traffic accident.
In these three stories, the script enters some new unknown values (in mathematical sense). The Austrian Freud (Sigmund) appears during Luke’s journey (from America to Europe), on the luxury ship. Corto Maltese seats together with the Ottoman officer. Here is, also, the Macedonian Milton Manaki, the first cinematographer at the Balkans. All that without any visible need, to me, at least – of course, as a simple audience.
#8 MM makes the distinction between his stories – not by their mechanical division as ordinary sequences: he also varies them with his own author’s styles, means and procedures. So, in the part that happens in New York, the megalopolis’ chaos and the human trash are shown, as well as the modern life – with dynamic and rapid style of the film flow, with short sequences and with hand-guided camera.
There are, also, some strange “angles” that doesn’t seem to “fit” perfectly in the whole. When the camera pays attention to the old Angela’s photos from the beginning of the 20th Century, the camera is tranquil, steady, stabile and perceptive. The passages on the photos and the souvenirs are to impressionable and emphasized to be a part of the same film procedure. Often, the photos are implemented as photography-frames with a short-time duration. And if I may to repeat myself about the impression about this part of this film: the film procedure where the photos are the significant part of the film narration is too much like “based on a true story” style, very TV-like, in this “odyssey”-year of 2001. The scenes that took place in the hospital are, also, too much TV-like: the nurse forbids smoking, the room-mate is “dead-cold”, the nurses are over-agile, the doctors “rub on” the stimulators, the scenery is also – so typical, with tubes ad bags for transfusion or infusion, many needles and tubes and pipes, the camera is hysteric with its movement, the film plans are mostly close-ups or close to it… So medically sterile. Like in some TV-soap on some City Hospital… The part that presents the Wild West is –in black & white technique, with no special scenery involved, anyway. The scenes are almost empty. The memories are somebody else’s, so we can say that here, the film director’s idea is in function here. But, the memories are very delicate phenomena in the film. At this part, the newspapers, photos and the first-hand telling of Elijah aren’t the only influence on the Wild West recalling. Many other influences can’t be escaped, like the films by Ford, Lang, Houston, etc. Not even Angela. She’s American, too. In this part, she’s the narrator, so there isn’t much of a dialog here. Empty again. A little iconography, few revolvers, cowboy hats, saddled horses, a small whore-house, not really enough for us to go back to the Wild West epoch. There aren’t Dock Holiday and Wyatt Erp, nor Billy the Kid, nor their shadows. The replica “Good day, sheriff!” is far from enough to “catch the context”. The third story, the one in Macedonia, is different from the other two, above all, with its visual and color attributes. The picturesque ethnic clothes and ornaments and other iconography, like the all-Balkan military and “war-path” uniforms are accented (the Komitaji freedom-fighters’ and the Albanian or Greek bandits’ “war-clothing”, as well as the Ottoman military uniforms), in the opposite of the American cowboy-desperado-spaghetti-surrealistic costumes. All that is confronted to the tame and tender physiognomies of the Macedonian girls, women, elders and children; confronted to the most beautiful Macedonian mountain village; to the picturesque and overwhelming Macedonian nature enriched with the crystal-clear mountain and beautiful archaic bridges; but the blood is ever-present: in the colors of the Macedonian ethnic clothing and in the colors of the famous and beautiful Macedonian blankets – the “yambollias”. Only the death is the equal for all of them. The death is everywhere. The confronted groups are: the Ottoman military troops, the Komitaji war units and the Albanian/Greek bandits. If one succeeds to comprehend that. Luke is with everybody and against everybody. They slaughter, hang and kill each other, even among themselves – and they do enjoy in it. That is, also, in opposite of the tame and beautiful nature presented in the film, as another contrapunct. There is almost no talking. What’s more to it, that little dialog that exists – isn’t really necessary at all. Cries, battle calls and pain yells… And the languages – little Turkish, little German, little English and French – and even less Macedonian. The brothers ride horses(Luke’s horse is beautiful), and their appearance – the music ilustrates with the mouth-harmonica using the spaghetti archetype. The story I defined as a chase story moves through few locations and in the village. Too little dynamics, too little scenes, too much dubbing, too much close-ups, too brutal, too much blood and gunpowder.
#9 Why the author operates with three stories? Why not two? Why the stories about the brothers and the Teacher aren’t one and the same story, or why they aren’t in continuity? Why the action is so fragmented? Most probably the author thought that if he merges this stories, the film would be too narrative, and without concept and motif. A film that would be difficult to push until its end. The first story has a plot, the second has not. So, as a plot – the adultery and Luke’s running away to Europe is used. It isn’t the most happily chosen plot, and the author-screenwriter of the film tries to hide it till the end of the film, and the audience is waiting in confusion for it. Even the beautifully thought trick of Luke’s death when he promotes himself as a “zombie”, is relatively vague and undeveloped, most probably to avoid the comparison with the films of the SIXTH SENSE-type of films. Here is the motif – the gold, which transfers into the second story. The audience should suppose that the Angela’s money that Luke gain with catching the Teacher, but it came out the opposite: Luke takes the money to avenge him and to save his wife and child. Well thought, but in all those battles, killings, dreams and fantasies, the motif got lost. That way, the only piece of surprise is lost, the piece that would stimulate the audience to go on and to watch the film with interest until its end.
What is to be said about the presence (in the film) of the above-mentioned Freud, Maltese and Manaki? We can link Manaki to the photos at Angela’s apartment, and the photographer and the photos are well used and functional in the film. So, it can be said that it doesn’t matter if there was Manaki or somebody else. Who was the one that filmed the Turkish and the Komitaji troops (that what Luke saw in Paris)? Is there any story behind it? With what we link Freud here? With the dreams Luke dreams? So the Oedipus complex of the brothers, who found – in the French whore – their mother? We can ink those moments, but the film should do it, as well. Or maybe, Angela is Freud’s disciple or follower, so even in her pre-mortal agony can’t escape his theory? Or, finally, everything is only some (thought as required) auto-referential art-mean. The non-Macedonian audience surely is in wonder who slaughters who, and who is who and who is what, etc. What’s Corto Maltese doing here? Everybody recognizes him… Does every film that has ambitions for artistic authenticity, and has violent/bloody story – have to end with the paraphrase from the WILD BUNCH? And if Markes described the human guts wide open, does someone have to show them – indeed? Do film and literature can present the same things with the same valorization? The professor Zhika Pavlovic was against such approach, and he also was – both – writer and filmmaker (and painter, sculptor, etc.). And what about Jagger and Josip Broz Tito…?
#1 I can agree that the film music is good, but also with that that the acting performances of the foreigners (David Wenham, Joseph Fiennes) were (under)average. Didn’t MM had any alternatives, so “the man who liked to kill so very much“ had to be some Robert-Redford-like-blond-guy, a hansom guy with typical Hollywood charm, and the one who mastered the half-smile till perfection, or even that should be considered as a contrapunct. The others were more like – posing. That, indeed, was their only job, anyway.
This is a “heavy” material to make a film. Too many traps – it hides within. It contains too many temptations – to enter the numerous stereotypes, or to find the balance between the source material (book, film, legend…) and the new, original film material. It needs too much mimicry to maintain the wanted originality. Too much attention is given to the details, and the important things are carelessly left aside. Too dangerous to play with a little bit of everything. Too complicated to be good.
And, almost at the end of this review of mine, let me go back to the beginning – to the issue one cannot escape: That’s the first feature film of MM – BEFORE THE RAIN. I just like to mention that this film also had three stories, also a lot fragmented, but still in continuity… They were placed (more or less) in the same time coordinates, and linked with the characters. Much more functional and a lot simpler. One very smart man wrote, somewhere, that BURNT BY THE SUN is the film that marked the end of the 20th Century, and BEFORE THE RAIN marked the beginning of the 21st Century. I agree with every syllable of that. There are bright, smart and clever people at least as much as that anonymous one that I’ve mentioned above, the one who claims that DUST is a film that will mark – if not a chapter, then –at least a page of the world film history. HMMM?
I agree with the fact that we all have the right on or own opinion. Of course, it’s not an imperative for any film to be acknowledged by everyone. It’s a Cultural Revolution. And we have every right to say what we think. I have even a little more right to say it, because I have few editors above me, and certain medium, which isn’t much influent lately. Well, quite enough, anyway. Finally, every one with his own arguments and with his own certainty in the fact how much one can influence and change oneself, or the others. MM, although, said that he’s content with the film and that is the most important thing in it – for him. I agree. I also think that’s the most important thing – myself. So, I hope that MM in the coming decade will be content more often, both on his and on the audience’s pleasure. Milčo Mančevski is Milčo Mančevski – both when he enchants and when he makes us anxious. One can’t be indifferent both to him and to his films. And – Liang (the film director with whom MM shared the Golden Lion in Venice (one of the three best Taiwan film authors) is being content – five or six times already. And the critics are content too, and his audience is also content, the same audience he does excite with every film he makes. So… Is MM in search for a new audience?
NOTE: I’m anxious and impatient to see this film’s DVD edition. Having in mind that the producer is a Westerner, DUST would probably be the first Macedonian (even part Macedonian) film to be promoted into this new image carrier, and I hope that it will happen very soon. I’m waiting, not to see the film, of course, I’ve seen it on the big screen, but more because of the extra features common for the DVD editions that the director and the producer of the film will offer. It’s always a pleasure t listen to Milčo Mančevski and to watch how he works on film. I think… actually, I’m certain that he has so much to tell. And this claim of mine has nothing to do with my optimistic character.
Translated by: Petar Volnarovski