Upon its release in 1994,
Milcho Manchevski's debut film Before The Rain was often compared to Pulp
Fiction,
because it came out around the same time, and also featured a three-part
narrative structure founded on a fractured timeline. Fourteen years later, when
fractured timelines have become so common that even TV sitcoms use them, the
structure of Before The Rain doesn't seem quite so novel, and frankly, its
repetition of images, sounds, and characters from storyline to storyline now
recalls the overly familiar "everything's connected" meta-irony of movies like Crash and Babel. Time and imitation have
sapped some of Before The Rain's vitality. And yet the movie is still tense and moving, perhaps
because there's something undeniable about its bleak depiction of ancient
tribal conflicts in the Balkans.
In the film's first
section, "Words," Grégoire Colin plays a young Macedonian monk who discovers an
Albanian girl hiding in his quarters, and attempts to hide her from a local
militia. In the second section, "Faces," Katrin Cartlidge plays a London
photo-agent who's been having an affair with one of her foreign
photojournalists, and struggles with how to tell her husband. In the third
section, "Pictures," the photojournalist, played by Rade Serbedzija, returns to
his Macedonian village and becomes embroiled in centuries-old skirmishes. Each
section "rhymes" in different ways. There's a rumble of thunder in each, as
well as a character vomiting, turtles, a snippet of Beastie Boys' "So What'cha
Want," and the repeated line, "Time never dies… the circle is not round." For
most of the movie, Manchevski subtly suggests that each section is taking place
at roughly the same time; in the final five minutes, he reveals exactly which
scene goes where, and underlines the idea that in the former Yugoslavia, it doesn't
matter whether a person tries to help or stay neutral. Trouble ensues either
way.
Manchevski trowels on the
melodrama. In a scenario that already has people drawing guns on old friends
and neighbors, there's really no need for a London interlude in which a
couple's attempt to break up is interrupted by an armed maniac. But at the same
time, Manchevski excuses some of his own broadness with sequences that pay
homage to Hollywood Westerns like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch. In retrospect, maybe Before
The Rain
is less a profound statement on the human condition than an artful, operatic
action film. Which means it may have a lot in common with Quentin Tarantino
after all.
Key features: A commentary track by Manchevski and
scholar Annette Insdorf, a short assortment of on-set footage and interviews,
plus samples of Manchevski's photography and his award-winning video for
Arrested Development's "Tennessee."