BEFORE THE RAIN Movie Review

Po Dezju
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The failure of this extraordinary picture to reach a wide American art house audience—despite nearly unanimous rave reviews—is part of a sad, consistent chain of evidence that most Americans will do anything to avoid the subject of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian conflicts, perhaps out of fear that they won't understand the complexities and ancient animosities that seem to thrive in any nation referred to as “the former” anything. In the case of Before the Rain, the focus of which is the Republic of Macedonia (which was, yes, part of the former Yugoslavia, as was Bosnia), those animosities are laid out in the form of a trilogy of inter-linked stories. The film begins and ends in Macedonia, detouring for an electrifying centerpiece in London. The tales are told simply but grippingly, and take on considerable additional power when the movie's ingeniously conceived but non-gimmicky circular structure becomes clear at the fade-out. The director, Milcho Manchevski, a Macedonian native who has chosen to live and work in America, has a command of the wide screen and a cinema sense that is immediately striking, and ultimately overwhelming. His portrait of a violent conflict that seems to involuntarily perpetuate itself would be an important statement about the human condition even if it weren't so specific in its time and place. Its authenticity, however, makes it all the more valuable, and all the more heartbreaking.

NEXT STOP … All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Prisoner of the Mountains, Underground

1994 120m/C GB FR MA Rade Serbedzija, Katrin Cartlidge, Gregoire Colin, Labina Mitevska, Phyllida Law; D: Milcho Manchevski; W: Milcho Manchevski; C: Manuel Teran; M: Anastasia. Independent Spirit Awards ‘96: Best Foreign Film; Venice Film Festival ‘94: Golden Lion; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘94: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS PGV