Before the rain
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Before the rain |
| Original title | Before the rain |
| Country of production |
Great Britain Macedonia France |
| original language |
English Macedonian Albanian French |
| Publishing year | 1994 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Milčo Mančevski |
| script | Milčo Mančevski |
| production |
Cédomir Kolar Sam Taylor Cat Villiers |
| music | Anastasia |
| camera | Manuel Teran |
| cut | Nicolas Gaster |
| occupation | |
| |
Before the Rain (original title: Before the Rain ) is a film drama by Milčo Mančevski from 1994. It was made in British-Macedonian-French co-production.
action
The film is divided into three parts, the action takes place against the background of the Yugoslav wars and the tensions between Muslim Albanians and Christian Macedonians in Macedonia . It begins in Macedonia, where the old monk Father Marko picks up the young brother Kiril, who has taken a vow of silence, from the monastery garden. He brings him back to the monastery, since it will rain soon, so the rain has already started in the valley.
1) Words
The monks of the Macedonian Orthodox monastery pray, children play outside the monastery with ammunition. When Kiril tries to go to sleep in his room, he finds a young woman in his bed. It is about the Muslim Albanian Zamira, who is said to have recently killed a Macedonian shepherd - a Christian - and is now wanted by the Macedonians. Kiril does not betray the woman. The next morning, two men are buried not far from the monastery; From a distance, a British woman is watching what is happening and is horrified. A short time later, a group of Macedonians disrupt the monks' morning prayers. The men, including Miter, the dead Zdrave's brother, are looking for Zamira, who is supposed to be in the monastery. The rooms are searched against the will of the monks, but the girl has disappeared. Only at night does Zamira return to Kiril's cell, where the monks find her the next morning. Kiril has to leave the monastery as a punishment and goes with Zamira; Both cannot understand each other due to the different language, but Kiril promises to go with her to his brother in Skopje and from there to his uncle in London, who is the photographer. A short time later, both of them are caught up with Zamira's grandfather and other family members. Zamira states that Kiril loves her. When he is sent away as a Christian, she runs after him and is shot by her own brother.
2) Faces
In London, Anne, an editor at a photo agency, learns that she is pregnant. She wants to separate from her husband Nick after she has started an affair with the successful war photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner Aleksandar. It appears surprisingly from a two-week photo assignment in Bosnia and has changed. He confesses to having killed in Bosnia. She is horrified and cries. When he asks her to come with him to his native Macedonia, she refuses. He travels alone. A short time later she receives a call from Kiril who wants to speak to Alexander. She informs him that Alexander has left. A little later she meets with Nick in a posh restaurant. She tells him that she is expecting a child from him, but at the same time makes it clear to him that she wants a divorce, even if she still has feelings for him. Meanwhile, an argument between an Eastern European guest and a waiter escalates in the restaurant. At first they both fight; the guest comes back to the restaurant shortly afterwards and shoots around. The waiter and Nick are killed.
3) Pictures
Aleksandar has arrived in Macedonia, which he has not visited for 16 years. He comes to his home village, his house of yore has fallen into disrepair. The next morning he is greeted by his cousin Zdrave and also meets his cousin Miter. Together she celebrates the reunion with the family. Despite warnings from his family, Aleksandar seeks out his former schoolmate and great love Hana, who is Albanian and therefore lives in the Muslim part of the village, which the Macedonians avoid. Although he is welcomed into the house by Hana's father, the mood is cool. Hana's son threatens to kill Aleksandar. In a later conversation with a veterinarian who helps shepherd Zdrave with the birth of various sheep calves, Aleksandar doubts that the war from other Balkan states will also come to Macedonia and thus to his village. The doctor pessimistically makes it clear that the residents will find a reason. Aleksandar later wrote to Anne about his "murder" on his PC: Since he was unable to take drastic war pictures in Bosnia, a prison guard killed a prisoner for him in front of his camera and he recorded the murder. Disaffected, Aleksandar now tears up the photos. Shortly afterwards he received the news that his cousin Zdrave was killed by a young Albanian woman. Nevertheless, he refuses to go on a hunt for the young woman with Miter and the others. During the night, Hana appears in his room and asks him to help her, since the perpetrator Zamira is her daughter. Aleksandar, accused of inactivity by Hana, goes to Miter and takes Zamira out of her custody to hand her over to ordinary justice. When he goes away with her, he is shot from behind by his relatives. Zamira, in turn, flees to the monastery while it begins to rain in the valley and picks up Father Marko Kiril from the monastery garden.
production
Before the rain was the feature film debut of director Milčo Mančevski. The film was shot in 1993 in Macedonia, including in and around Skopje and Ohrid , and in London . The monastery in the film is the Treskavec monastery on the slope of the Zlatovrv mountain not far from the town of Prilep . Shortly before the end of the field recordings in Macedonia, the country was officially recognized as an independent state. The cost of producing the film was approximately four million dollars raised by Polygram Classics London and Noe Productions Paris. The Macedonian Vardar Film supported the shoot with technology, crew and extras, among other things.
The costumes were created by Caroline Harris and Sue Yelland , the film construction came from Sharon Lomofsky and David Munns . Among the photographs Anne looks through in her agency are works by well-known war photographers, including Luc Delahaye ( Child with I on Forehead ). In the credits, the film commemorates Abdurrahman Shala, who played Zekir in the film and who died in 1994.
Before the Rain premiered on September 1, 1994 at the Venice International Film Festival . It was shown in German cinemas on September 28, 1995, where it was shown with subtitles, premiered on German television on May 28, 1996 and also appeared on video on March 4, 1996.
Narrative form
The film is divided into three segments: Words , Faces and Pictures (words, faces, pictures). The parts relate to each other in details, for example Anne looks at photos at the beginning of Part 2 that show Zamira's shooting. Before the start of the three segments there is a short scene in which father picks up Marko Kiril from the monastery garden. He speaks the phrase "Time never dies, the circle is not round." ("Time never dies, the circle is not round"), which occurs in all three segments and also relates to the structure and the overall message of the film. This completes a circle, so the end of the film seems to have reached the beginning of the film.
The death of the photographer Aleksandar - his funeral is shown at the beginning of the film and Anne also looks at the scenery - remains a paradox in the circle . Urs Jenny stated that the film "[resembles] a journey through time that [seems] to lead very strangely forwards and backwards at the same time". Roger Ebert called the circle shape symbolic, the structure shows that hatred and bloodshed will continue until someone succeeds in breaking the circle. Paradoxes that arise in the film show, according to the director, that the apparent circle is not closed, so there can be a way out. Aleksandar, who was also responsible for the continuation of the circle through his photographs of the atrocities, only escapes the cycle through his death. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung interpreted Aleksandars death differently: “Where everyone suddenly has to be something specific, a Muslim or a Christian, an Albanian or a Macedonian, for someone who is a lot, there is only the exit into death.” Questions about this, for example Who took the photos of Zamira's killing and how they got to Anne in London are deliberately left open.
Other film critics saw in addition to the narrative circle of the entire film further separate narrative circles in each segment, so each segment deals with an interplay of time, love and religious hatred, with hatred always destroying love and only time progresses. With his non-linear narrative style, Mančevski succeeds in taking his film beyond the specific message to a general statement and thus to turn it into a modern parable .
Other critics saw the film as the further development of a narrative form brought to the cinema by Quentin Tarantino : "With 'Before the Rain', Milcho Manchevski continued the virtualization of cinematic space that Tarantino had set in motion", according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . While the actors in Tarantino, for example in Pulp Fiction, “move in a narrative space-time continuum like in a computer game […], that is, forwards, backwards and to the side”, but the storylines open up at the end, Mančevski creates “'Impossible' narrative room”, in which, for example, Zamira lives when her death is narrated an episode earlier with photos in Anne's agency.
criticism
The film-dienst stated that the film was “obviously constructed and occasionally uncertain in the dosage of the effects”, but nevertheless took a “clear position against violence as a means of conflict resolution”. The film testifies to "the narrative as well as the directorial talent of its young director." Roger Ebert praised the film as one of the best films of the year and as a brilliant film debut. Variety called the film "visually and narrative breathtaking".
For Cinema , Vor dem Regen was a “poetic beacon against the power of hate”. The Stuttgarter Zeitung called it an "angry, bitter, desperate and deeply humane film" and a masterpiece.
“Manchevski worked with references, with symbolic foreshadowing and references, which seem all the more dense and poetic as the film does not develop its quiet pacifist message in a linear fashion, but (literally) circles it,” said the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . "It is so artistically constructed [...] that its credibility would almost have been lost if the artistic threatens to become independent again and again," wrote Der Tagesspiegel .
Awards (selection)
At the International Film Festival in Venice won Before the Rain numerous awards, including the Golden Lion , the UNESCO Prize, the Premio Pasinetti for best actor (Rade Šerbedžija), the FIPRESCI Prize and the Audience Award. In the run-up there had been Greek protests due to the participation of the film, which was shown as a Macedonian contribution to the festival. Greece had not yet recognized Macedonia as an independent state at the time.
At the São Paulo International Film Festival in 1994 the film was awarded the Audience Award; Director Mančevski also won the 1994 Stockholm International Film Festival for Best Directing Debut. In 1995, Before the Rain was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Language Film . Milčo Mančevski won a special award at the David di Donatello award .
At the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards , the film won the Best International Film category, and in the same year it also received a Guldbagge for Best Foreign Film .
Web links
- Before the rain in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Before the rain at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Ron Holloway: A Film From the State That Does n't Exist . In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 24, 1994.
- ↑ Treskavec Monastery . In: Philine of Opole: Macedonia . Trescher 2012, p. 170.
- ↑ Marc Hairapetian: From the Balkans to Hollywood . In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 28, 1995.
- ↑ Information according to the film credits.
- ↑ a b Violence of Images - Interruption: Before the Rain . In: Heinz-Peter Preusser (Hrsg.): War in the media . Rodopi, 2005, p. 163.
- ↑ a b Urs Jenny: Imagine . In: Der Spiegel , No. 39, 1995, p. 260.
- ↑ a b c d Before the Rain on rogerebert.com
- ↑ a b Violence of Images - Interruption: Before the Rain . In: Heinz-Peter Preusser (Hrsg.): War in the media . Rodopi, 2005, pp. 164-165.
- ↑ a b c Beat Brenner: Yugoslavia as cyberspace. On Milcho Manchevski's virtualization of cinematic space . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 1, 1995, p. 47.
- ↑ Ken Dancyger: The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice . CRC Press, 2014, p. 211.
- ↑ Before the rain. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Deborah Young: Review: "Before the Rain" . September 7, 1994.
- ↑ Before the rain on cinema.de
- ↑ In golden light . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , September 27, 1995.
- ↑ Torbjoern Bergfloedt: New in cinemas: compassion lot Fatum. Milcho Manchevski's “Before the Rain” . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 1, 1995, p. 47.
- ↑ Peter W. Jansen: The silence of the monks . In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 21, 1995.