Reviews

The film is worth watching only if you stop it after half an hour. It starts of with funny conversations in a bar and makes one expect a good, funny story is to come. Well, I can tell you it will not come. It will deteriorate in minutes into a movie that challenges your patience as well as your feelings of shame for the actors to an extend you will probably not be pleased to witness.

In an interview I heard that the director wanted to express in this film the feeling of a loss of identity that, according to him, the majority of the people in this globalizing world experience. I was amazed to hear that. Am I living in the same world he lives in? OK a lot of people do walk around in the same clothes as mine and listen to the same music and all, but that doesn't make me feel like I am losing my identity. What does Khrzhanosvky think, that we are not more than the clothes we wear and the movies we watch? Am I shortsighted or is he?

Well my vote: the good start of the movie saves it from getting a 1, a decent 4 is my conclusion.

What made the film very beautiful, was how it shows in a light-hearted way how futile man is in history. The life of the people in the village is shown to the background of historical remains from different periods, philosophical chatter about the meaning of life, stories about the village in earlier days, the old castle being built into a 5-star hotel, state-of-the-art windmills erected in the neighborhoods and the 2003 American attack on Irak about to start. Beautiful too is the conversation between two Moroccans who immigrated to the region and who notice that it is funny that they live there in the place where their forefathers left their traces 800 years ago (the old castle in the village!) The film leaves one the question if the village with its last generation of inhabitants will undergo the same faith as the village dating from Roman times at the excavation site nearby.

The film is worth watching for the reason above, but you need to be in a patient mood however, because it is not too fast and takes long. If you give the film a chance you will step out feeling relaxed as the villagers in the film do.

Normally I am hesitating to give other interpretations to a movie than ones that are very clear. While watching this movie you should not be hesitant to do so, as:

According to the director (source: introduction to the movie by him at the Rotterdam Film Festival) the autism of the girl who is one of the main characters can be seen as a metaphor for the state in which the Balkan nations are left after the wars in the 1990's.

It took me quite some time to recover from the confusion this movie left me in (alike the confusion left in the Balkan countries after the wars?). Now, after recovery I think it was a very beautifully shocking movie.