That kind of strategy also conveys Milčo Mančevski in “Dust”. The historiography in the film lies in the effort, the desire of the old Angela to create a story, to tell history. But as the New Historicism says, her effort is not, both by the intentions and the result, to create History but Her Story. Her history is a product of her own world, it is internalized, intimated, far from the official versions of the consensual community. That history is built on the principle of the bricolage, everything that can be used in formation of a story, a version, is used. Excerpts from newspapers, old photos, the money as a numismatic means, the old movies (Milton Manaki’s old rarities), the stories from the closest. Where a loop misses, and there is nowhere to borrow from, to misuse, the ”historian” Angela to add, freely invents at the same time quite conscious for the inventions. (the scene with the question about the number of the soldiers: 2000, 200 or 20).
The result is a patchwork that is open even to new (re)interpretations (the incorporation, the foundation of Edge in that history). Thus, an apocryphal history, which substitutes the official one, is being created, trying to incorporate what is left out or missing; a history that operates in the dark taints, that demystifies and revises. Therefore, there is room in that history for both Corto Maltese and Josip Broz-Tito, even for such unbelievable combinations like cowboys against bashibozuk (illegal Turkish army), komiti, and andarti (Greek rebellions). Following the trail of Brian Mchale’s research, who speaks of the postmodern discovery of the Mexican border and Middle and South America as a different zone, a zone of passion, life-span, madness, overdrawing, against the Yankees’ North America, we can say that we deal with a similar postmodern redesign of the map of Macedonia against the tendency of official history which tries to place it in a privileged space, in a rational world where the victim, and the life, are reduced to a state of creating a myth which later serves as a legitimization. “The history” of Angela serves as legitimization as well, though her own; but it is not formed by the principles of the mythological, official history. An element with which Mancevski deviates from the historiography metafiction is the lack of “genuine”, “realistic” characters, apart from the totally marginal usage of the known Manaki’s documentaries, and the allusion to Froyd, Tito, and Maltese. The movie is based on invented, fictional characters, as a result of which the numerous tensions and effects typical of the historiography metafiction when the “invented” and the “genuine” characters face each other, are missed. With this inclination towards invented events and people, towards a simulated action amongst a “concrete” historical chronology (Macedonia, 1912, facing the Balkan Wars),”Dust” approaches an allegory. It contains in itself an alienation of the sense as a result of the time alienation, an estrangement between the source and the actual, (Jencks). The unattached and partial reminiscences, the story without action, the giving of an illusory sense where the hues are coordinated, leads to a particular kind of enigmatic allegory. As a result, due to the awareness of the distance of the past, and the desire it to be saved for the sake of the present, the form of palimpsest is being adopted, the text is being doubled, one text is being read through another (Craig Owens), based on a “genuine”, documentary matrix (“New York Times”’ clippings), a retro, a remake, a replay is being done, desperate attempts to usurp the vanishing past (Jameson), all which results in a disagreement with the real history.
Thus, the metanarrative as an ironic annulment of the categories –fiction/life exists, above all, on the level of the second story, on the level of the reminiscence of the past, narrating a story. The basic story, the one between Angela and Edge, follows a realistic strategy where the metafiction is placed and treated solely as a fabrication (Edge’s reaction to Angela’s exaggerations and, later, the reaction of the girl from the plane to Edge’s exaggerations). Actually, we deal with a projective type of metanarrative – the narration is dislocated to another (Boris Gregoricic), i.e., the narrator Angela takes over the author’s role, and through her own story of the past she turns the attention towards her own status of artefact, aiming to place on a higher level the mentioned questions within reality, i.e., the past and the fiction (Patricia Waugh).
The projective type of metanarrative, i.e., the dislocation of the narrative in another, gives us the freedom to place the movie “Dust” even among the postmodern autobiographical works. Taking into account that it is a feigned autobiography, Angela narrates her story in which the first part, as we had mentioned, is completely realistic; it has to simulate the real extradiegetic life.
The postmodern autobiographies bring us back to the actual act of writing (the motto “where do our voices go when we are gone”); the public self – demonstration (“this is my story and I will do whatever I want in it” – Angela says); exhibitionism or a documentary reconstruction of the fragments of her own life (the usage of family photographs and clippings from “New York Times”), where the focus is not on the stories, data, facts, but on the writing language, the self-demonstration. On a syntactic level, the autobiographical postmodern letter is absentminded, fragmented. It is being achieved in “Dust” with the interweaving of the two narrative lines where ludistically and ironically are incorporated a number of intertextual traces, fragments, like the direct quotations from the silent movies, and simulation projections of the individual mythologies, i.e. the pseudo-quotations, the pastiches of the silent movies, the hypothetical Teacher or Froyd’s travelling. So the text circles from the metalanguage (the speech for the speech, the speech for the internal fantasies, the speech of self-disposure) to the burst of subjectivity, the hypothetical, the desire, presentation of other (the thinking of the cowboy Luke on his opinions against the Macedonians “live your own life because everyone lives his own death”, through the despise by which the Turkish officer refuses to speak on the cowboy’s barbarian language) and self–representation in the discourse of the other (Edge trying to put himself among the cowboys of the photo at the Alamo battle).
#6 The subject of narration in the movie is only at first sight Angela, she has no unified and integrated consciousness and no matter how hard she tries to reach that, her Self constantly runs and slides, it’s not coherent, the narrator is de-centered, multiplied, it’s hard to be located, he is self–introspected, consists of many voices, part of them belonging to the author, can be located out of the intratextual world, they are manipulative, without an unique perspective, with plurality of view points (look at R.Ivekovic, A.Zlatar). The subject dissolves, it decentralizes, it distributes and multiplies, there is a retreat from the medial and privileged position of a strong master-subject.
That’s also implicated by the leaving of the straight line of the story. Trying for a unification to be attained, to build something, to shut the holes which can’t be shut, an eclecticism, style mixtures, quotations, intertexts are used. Angela’s need for producing and reception of the story is, above all, a need for producing a sense. But that’s also a question of love, more like a metaobject, metatheme, love for the narration and the personal characters, a kind of narrative seduction. Angela tells with such a passion, that’s “more important then anything for her” and eventually she succeeds to cause the same feeling at Edge’s.
the art is inside
