Majki

I must say that I have watched the movie on the internet, although I have seen all Mancheski's films in cinema. All of the negative reviews I have heard or read I guess formed my opinion in negative manner, although the movie is fair – nice story happening at the end of the world, in Europe outside of Europe. I usually have opposed opinion compared to the rest of the world but this time I need to agree with the strata. This movie is so subjective, not presenting reality, but used as a pursuit of atonement of the author for I believe his personal struggles with his homeland, or career that could have been brilliant in the period after Before the Rain. Also, as Macedonian and Serbian native speaker (for some reason most of the vocal songs in the film are in Serbian) I found it difficult to understand certain dialects, which I believe it could have been prevented if the participants in the movie were prepared before filming.

"Mothers", Manchevski's fourth movie, is a three-part movie which grabs your attention from the beginning till the end, slowly building the tension which culminates in the last, third part. Although the director uses experimental approach here by mixing two fictional parts with one documentary, it doesn't feel too artsy or too "weird" at all, it's just an interesting collage of three stories that connect only thematically with each other. Raw documentary-like approach to the cinematography as it is needed here and it looks beautiful. The music is very emotional - old folk songs from this part of the world in a new arrangements that feel great mixed with the visuals. Artist like Milcho would never give you everything on plate, he wants us to be a part of the whole experience that this movie offers to us with our interpretations of the messages the author is serving using his writing and visual skills. After credits roll by it will make you think about many issues and questions Milcho raises with his latest offering like the truth and the nature of truth and how mothers are connected to the story in these three parts. Be sure you wont be able to easy forget what you see here, especially that last documentary part about the serial killer and his victims which is masterfully done.

Human Condition

Already in his unforgettable and highly influential Before the Rain; but also in his Cult Western Dust, Milcho Manchevski has used documentary elements for his cinematic storytelling to blur the lines between fact and fiction; as if he was telling his audiences "look; the fiction is always part of the reality, its only how we arrange things and how we construct the story, that makes the difference." In Mothers, that premiered at the TIFF 2010 and stunned audiences there, Manchevski takes these ideas to the extreme: Mothers is a film triptych, containing two fictional and one documentary segment - each of them telling more than one story: a girl who falsely reports a flasher to the police and causes violence to the innocent young man. A film crew of three who sets out for the ever so beautiful Macedonian mountains, documenting old customs and meeting an odd and grumpy brother and sister, who haven't been talking to each other, even though they are the only ones left in the middle of nowhere for years. The 'real' story of numerous old woman in the Macedonian town of Kicevo, who have been raped murdered by a long life neighbor. The horror of the events; as documented by their families and friends, the police and the authorities. Each part stands on its own - only at the end these almost not connected parts come together: Evolving from the single lie of the young girl in the first segment to the numerous different voices in the last part; Manchevski evokes a panomaratic view of life, dozens of stories, with – in spite of all the joy - human capability for destruction lurking always in the realm of the possible. What we take as fact or as fiction is the disturbing and difficult question Manchevski poses upon his audiences; also what to do with these experiences in our lives is not easy to answer at the end. Maybe the last frame of the film can give can give a hint: The young girl; lying upside down on the table at the police station, taking photos with her mobile phone; voiced over by the documentary film team: we film to document; to keep the memory. Even it might be a lie, or a picture turned upside down; we cant help but go on with our lives and work, searching for the truth against all odds. We have to consider Sisiphos a happy man (Albert Camus). Once again, Manchevski has opened his unique and multilayered cinematic world for us: always thought provoking and permanently questioning what he is doing as a filmmaker working in a medium, that can manipulate so easily and is predesignated to all to fast and easy answers.

"The circle is not round," was a key line in Manchevski's Oscar nominated debut feature Before the Rain (1994) that presented three interwoven tales set in Macedonia (The former Yugoslav republic) after the Bosnian wars and before the Kosovo upheavals and battles. Manchevski is from Macedonia but he has built a career in the United States including making numerous short films, publishing books of fiction and photography, staged performance art, teaching fort the NYU Film School and directing for HBO's The Wire. Yet with the premiere of this his fourth feature film Mothers at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, he has returned to his homeland to create a fully engaging three story and multi-layered film that once more suggests "the circle of life is still not round."

Part of the power of Before the Rain when it appeared was to pull audiences everywhere who had become burdened and even perhaps bored with TV CNN styled news coverage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia into the heart and soul and the beautiful landscape of Manchevski's homeland that he had not been back to for years. Through the Christian and Muslim characters presented in Before the Rain, Manchevski takes us beyond politics and religion into the center of dysfunctional families that are ready to kill each other.

As with Before the Rain, three narratives are presented with no direct link to each other beyond the point that Manchevski puts the viewer to work building his or her own links and bridges to this "circle" given that the title --Mothers --challenges us to see these narratives through this female-centered label. For we know well that Hollywood and most cinemas everywhere make "male-centered" films seldom with women at the center of their narratives. And part of what is so appealing in Manchevski's latest film is that he knows as we do too that "news" and wars are so much about what men are doing to men as well as to innocent women and children. Thus Mothers opens up lines between documentary and fiction at the same time that it also blurs them (what is truth and what is fiction as in the two girls "making up" the story of having seen the male flasher) as Manchevski shows us ways in which women as mothers, daughters, grandmothers, wives,relatives and neighbors find ways to survive in a contemporary post-war culture where dysfunctional families (as in the brother and sister not talking to each other for sixteen years) must survive in violent neighborhoods (the murder of the retired mothers).

Performances are excellent throughout the film beginning with the young girls, Emilija Stojkovska and Milijana Bogdanoska who are both playfully innocent and also devilishly cunning, and moving on the young filmmaking trio as Ana Stojanovska enjoys a lusty friendship with Kole (Vladimir Jacev) but is also attracted to the younger filmmaker, Simon (Dimitar Gjorjievski). Grandpa (Salaetin Bilal) and Grandma (Ratka Radmanovic) each give "old age" new visions including Grandma's comment on camera to the trio as they ask about pregnancies over the years, "There is no end of DICK!" and bursts into non-stop laughter. And then there are the real people of the town of Kicevo who are interviewed in the final murder sequence of the film.

One also has to salute Mothers for its multi-national production team of companies from France, Bulgaria, Macedonia headed up by a Greek producer, Christina Kallas, who has for years now as Director of the Balkan Script Fund and President of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE). In fact, Ms Kallas captures the overall quality of the film when she comments, "The film blurs the lines between fiction and documentary stylistically. Indeed watching the film you do not understand where fiction ends and documentary begins. But this, once again, has to do with our perception rather than with the director's intention to manipulate you. As a matter of fact, the film is completely devoid of such intentions"

No doubts one of the best directors of our time, Milcho Manchevski's work in Mothers is surprisingly vague and leaves the viewer with a lot to be desired. Three separate linear stories, one of them being a documentary about a real life situation involving a serial killer from Kicevo filmed in "Spike Lee joint" style, fall short of conveying the message Milcho wanted viewers to see and feel. The documentary part of the movie (which is the best) is rather a standalone movie instead of an integral part of Mothers. Milcho's approach to the story about the serial killer from Kicevo is interesting and disturbing at the same time - you are presented with interviews of real people who were involved in the case (lawyers, forensic experts, police officers, prison managers, judges, relatives of victims and killer etc.) and they are all unedited, thus one can see the under-the-average cultural and intellectual level of the Macedonian society. This is the interesting part, the disturbing part is the exploitation of the relatives of the victims and the killer (his wife) who answer rather private and intimate questions about themselves and the victim/killer. Yet, this remains and is the best thing the viewer could expect from the movie. The other two stories - little girls in mischief and young people filming a documentary in Mariovo lack good acting (except the old man and the old lady in the Mariovo part) and fail to produce any intensity or controversy as intended.

Milcho is an excellent director but this movie does not contain any of his success ingredients like in past achievements.