Macedonian Film Festival: Milcho Manchevski

While Milcho Manchevski’s greatest claim to international fame might be as the director of the first Macedonian film nominated for the best foreign language Academy Award, he probably deserves far more credit for inspiring a host of films that in various ways fracture linear narrative. Told in a triptych which forms a circular narrative, Manchevski’s Before the Rain (trailer here), made its European festival debut weeks ahead of Pulp Fiction, yet it would be Tarantino’s film that would be credited (or blamed) for a parade of non-linear imitators. In advance of the January 30th New York opening of Manchevski’s latest film, Shadows, the director’s first two films closed the Macedonian Film Festival Sunday night.

Rain begins and ends in Macedonian, but its middle story is set in London. The film was in fact a British-Macedonian co-production, at a time when the British government did not recognize that of Macedonia. As befits its title, a storm is always approaching in Rains, both the meteorological and human varieties. In “Words,” the first chapter, Kiril, a young monk who has taken a vow of silence, gives shelter to Zamira, a young Albanian girl running from a lynch mob. After his act of sanctuary results in his own expulsion from the monastery, Kiril mentions an uncle in London might be able to help them, and that is indeed where Manchevski shifts the action with “Faces.” The Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalist Aleksandar Kirkov is returning to the city after an assignment in Bosnia that profoundly disturbed him. After resigning, he tells his photo-editor and illicit lover he is returning to Macedonian, with or without her. She declines to leave despite her dubious feelings for her husband. However, the violence she had only experienced vicariously through Kirkov’s lens erupts into her own world when a Serbian rivalry turns violent in a posh London restaurant.

The longest segment, “Pictures,” tells the story of Kirkov’s problematic homecoming. As he approaches his native village, he disarms a petulant teenager standing guard with a machine gun. At times Kirkov resembles Eastwood’s Man with No Name, except instead of a former gunslinger, Kirkov is a retired photographer. However, we eventually learn that his camera has actually killed people. Although more familiar to American audiences for sinister roles on Fox’s 24 and in films like Eyes Wide Shut and The Saint, Rade Šerbedžija gives one of the best screen performances of the 1990’s as Kirkov, the celebrated observer forced to chose sides and participate.

Clearly, the spaghetti westerns were a pronounced influence on Manchevski, because he would incorporate the genre into his second film, Dust. Told in flashback by Angela, an elderly woman, to her would-be robber “Edge,” Manchevski weaves a Munchausen-esque fable about Cain and Abel brothers who start in the Old West, but travel to the wild East of Macedonia, as it revolts against the Ottoman Empire. Again, Manchevski plays narrative games, but the intrusion of elements from disparate time periods is often distractingly played for comedic effect.

The strongest scenes of the film are actually the least mythical. Rosemary Murphy and Adrian Lester convincingly sell the unlikely relationship between Edge and Angela. Unfortunately, neither brother is particularly interesting. Joseph Fiennes’s Elijah is a caricature of religious zealotry, while David Wenham is somewhat more nuanced as Luke, who is incapable of true emotional engagement, except when killing people.

Dust is a big, ambitious film that ultimately got away from Manchevski. Rains however, is a contemporary masterpiece that reveals increasingly greater depths with each viewing. In Rains, characters fantastically reappear in various times and places to further challenge the overall narrative thread. Yet, Manchevski’s execution is subtle, never directly interfering with the events on-screen. Ultimately, the cycle of violence continues, as the story doubles back, forming a complete circuit. Evidently, Sergio Leone was not his only influence. During last night’s Q&A, Manchevski explained the first part of the film’s repeated mantra: “Time never dies, the circle is not round” was in fact inspired by Chick Corea’s Mad Hatter album.

Given his international success, the Manchevski double-feature made a fitting closing night for the Macedonian Film Festival. Rains is a member of several exclusive cinematic clubs: the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, the New York Times’ “Best 1,000 Films Ever Made,” and a Criterion Collection DVD treatment. Though flawed, Dust is still fascinating filmmaking, worth seeing simply to compare with future Manchevski films, like the forthcoming Shadows.

Macedonian Film Festival: I am from Titov Veles

Many Communist-era industrial behemoths are still around, continuing to plague the environment in former Warsaw Pact countries. Macedonian’s Titov-Veles, now known simply as Veles, is one such city dominated by a carcinogenic white elephant. Its dreary backdrop dominates Teona Strugar Mitevska’s I am from Titov Veles (trailer here), which opened the Macedonian Film Festival last night.

The blight of Veles accentuates the bleak desperation of three sisters’ lives. The eldest Slavica is a recovering heroin addict looking for economic security. Sapho, the middle sister, is obsessed with immigrating out of Macedonia. Deeply affected by their mother’s desertion and father’s subsequent death, the youngest, Afrodita, desperately clings to her older sisters. Since their mother left, she has not spoken a word out loud, and might even have difficulty fully distinguishing fantasy from reality.

Mitevska portrays a rootless Macedonian, where jobs are scarce and immigration information is discussed in much the same way New Yorkers trade real estate anecdotes. Given the tremendous continuing human and environmental costs of what the press notes call “forceful socialist industrialization,” it is understandable Afrodita’s sisters are looking for a way out. However, when they find apparent escape from the doldrums of Veles, they leave behind Afrodita, in much the manner their mother did to the family years before. Ill-prepared for life on her own, Afrodita’s perceptions and judgments becomes ever more questionable. Likewise, Mitevska’s narrative becomes increasingly subjective, seemingly giving Afrodita’s fantasies equal footing with ostensive reality.

In other words, Titov is most definitely a festival picture. Unfailingly patient, Mitevska lets her distinctive visuals unfold at a very deliberate pace. Often we watch Afrodita from odd angles, observing events at ankle level or over her shoulder. At other times, we see her fully exposed during moments of such vulnerability, the film feels intrusive. Mitevska’s sister and producer, Labina Mitevska, carries the entire emotional weight of the film as the lost Afrodita. She is quite convincing, holding up well under the scrutiny of director Mitevska’s unforgiving lens.

Somehow Mitevska has crafted a film that is both impressionistic and naturalistic. While casting a critical eye on contemporary Macedonian culture, particularly the gender attitudes of the brutish men the sisters encounter, Titov is a very personal story and a demanding film. Although it might not sound like a Chamber of Commerce promotional film, Macedonia has selected it as its official best foreign language film submission for the upcoming Academy Awards, in hopes of repeating Macedonia’s success in 1994 with the nomination of Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain, which will close the festival with a special screening Sunday. The Macedonian Film Festival continues through the weekend, and Titov will screen again in New York this coming January at MoMA.

Macedonia

Macedonia
By Harvey Pekar and Heather Robinson. Illustrated by Ed Piskor
Villard tradepaper
9778-0-345-49899-1

Harvey Pekar’s greatest fame might be for his wildly uncomfortable guest appearances on the Letterman show and the Paul Giamatti film based on his autobiographical graphic novels. He is also a widely published jazz critic, who has also been known to broach more political subjects (a phenomenon we cannot object to). His latest graphic novel, Macedonia co-written by Heather Robinson, is such a departure, tackling recent events in the Balkans and wider themes of war and peace.

Macedonia is in fact very polemical. It certainly proves the dramatic challenges of providing historical exposition, often thinly disguised here as dialogue. Much of this background material is lucidly written, at times challenging preconceptions about the region. Even the term “Balkan” comes under scrutiny when Pekar and Robinson point out:

“The whole idea of the Balkans is only partly geographic. When the term came about in the 1800s, it was meant to describe Ottoman holdings in Europe . . . This idea persists that once a place is Balkan, it will always be Balkan. As if the place somehow imprints on its inhabitants a genetic destiny—one of war, fragmentation, and deceit.” (p. 25)

The basic narrative of Macedonia follows Robinson as she travels through the Balkan country, collecting evidence from its recent history to support her contention that war is not inevitable. It opens with her defending her major in Peace Studies to a skeptical Poli Sci professor (presumably one of the few conservatives on faculty at Berkley). While it is entertaining to hear him refer to her department as “all ideology,” their essential argument whether war is or is not an inevitable state of humanity seems like a bit of a straw man. Most critics of peace studies and peace movements would rather argue that the human cost of peace is often greater than war, as witnessed by the crimes of National Socialism, Communism, and Islamic Fascism. At times war may very well be prevented, but at what price?

There is much Balkan history and geopolitical analysis in Macedonia. As for actual plot and character development, it may leave some readers cold. Those who only read Pekar’s music writing will not find much of interest. In one scene Robinson’s friend Delisa jams with some Skopje street musicians, complaining of their chauvinist mind-set: “If I were a guy I could have gotten the guy to play his riff and it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But instead his friend was hitting on us and he’s showing off.” (p. 83) (Even in America, women musicians sometimes face these attitudes.)

However, Robinson’s carefully selected debate question does offer some interesting analysis in her Macedonian case study. It is true that Macedonia averted a Bosnian style war, but whether this was truly a case of peaceful strategies winning out over war is open to interpretation. As Macedonia explains, there was a very real armed Albanian insurrection. While short-lived and resulting in only a handful of casualties, it did lead to the Ohrid Agreement, which addressed the grievances of the Albanian minority. One might argue that this was so a swift and decisive victory for war, there was not time for the atrocities seen elsewhere in the former-Yugoslavia.

Conversely, the horrors of Bosnia could just as easily be attributed to strategies of “peace.” The UN’s record of defending its so-called safe havens” is simply tragic. Bosnians were also disproportionately disadvantaged by the UN arms embargo, as the Serbs controlled most of the former Yugoslav army (JNA)’s arms. Although in press materials Robertson says “They name streets after Bill Clinton” in Kosovo, one doubts they have the same regard for him in Bosnia and Herzegovina, since he twice vetoed Congressional resolutions calling for an end to the embargo. The eventual cease fire did not come until Bosnia and Croatian forces turned the tide against the Serbians.

It is true that Macedonia avoided the horrors Bosnia endured, even though Pekar and Robinson admit many of the underlying tensions remain. Much of that recent history, as recounted in Macedonia is fascinating. As an actual graphic novel, it is underdeveloped. Most characters are indistinguishable from each other, merely coming into the picture to announce their name, ethnicity, and designated geopolitical lesson to impart to readers.

The strongest aspect of Macedonia is the very real affection it expresses for the actual people of the Balkans. Macedonia actually makes readers want to visit Macedonia, when Pekar and Robinson write of Macedonians:

“Everyone teased each other. Told stories, interrupted each other. I missed interruptions. . . . Here, people get so engaged. They interrupt, they gesture.” (p. 128)

Ultimately, that fondness for Macedonia and its people gives the graphic novel heart, making it readable, despite its long passages of historical background and occasional ideological excesses (of course, there this the requisite slam on Pres. Bush, obligatory to the point of being boring). There is at least food for thought and debate here, something Robinson, to her credit, welcomes several times in the graphic novel.