Entre los muertos

I recently saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This was Macedonia's official entry as Best Foreign Language Film to the Academy Awards. First of all, I had to refresh myself geographically to find out exactly where Macedonia is, which is a landlocked Balkan nation that was once part of the Yugoslav Republic and is surrounded by Serbia, Bugaria, Greece and Albania. Set in the nation's capital of Skopje with location shooting in Ohrid this is a beautiful country and a beautiful film. Director/writer Milcho Manchevski, noted for his first two critically acclaimed films and now residing in New York returns to Macedonia to film Shadows, a story about a young doctor, Lazar Perkov (Borce Nacev), who is involved in a life threatening car accident. After a year of rehabilitation and his marriage to Ignjat (Dime Llije) dissolving and living a professional life in the shadow of his successful and dominant mother, Dr. Vera Perkov (Sabina Ajrula), Lazar is visited by a mysterious old woman with a message for him in an old forgotten dialect that he can not decipher. He seeks translation to the message at a university where he meets Menka (Vesna Stanojevska) who is not who she seems. Menka, the old woman and a man with a baby are all from the old village where Lazar's mother was born and are seeking his help to right a wrong carelessly committed by his mother. Nacev and Ajrula are excellent in their roles but the big surprise of the cast is the acting debut of Stanojevska, an exotic beauty in an erotic role who in her day job away from acting is the Harpist with the Macedonian National Opera and Ballet Orchestra. What a great find by Manchevski as Stanojevska lights up the screen and is sure to have an international acting career if she so chooses. Veteran Italian cinematographer Fabio Chianchetti beautifully and masterly photographs. Kiril Spaseski as art director and David Munns as production designer give this film a great look blending the modern with the old. A great music score from Ryan Shore who was at the film's screening for Q&A. Some Tom Waitts music is also featured in the film. This is a fine film and one of my favorites of the 38 films I saw this year at the festival and I would give it a 9.0 out of 10.

Today evening I watched the Shadows, the third movie of Milcho Manchevski. I believe the title of the movie should be Ghosts rather than Shadows. Even tough I expect it to be a movie about everyday life it turned out to be a horror movie. I believe this is the best Machevski movie so far and it definitely deserves to be at least nominated for Oskar, in the foreign movie category.

In this movie Manchevski uses the same rationality cliché as in his previous movies. However, in Senki this rationality is more stressed which gives good contrasts in the movie. To illustrate this I shall use some scenes from the movie, since I believe that many of you are familiar with them. Manchevski involves the contrasts between the rational and free, the moral and immoral, the individual and the collective, love and hate. The moral and rational win in the end. In a somewhat subconscious way Manchevski stipulates that the possibility of the origin of all the unhappiness lies behind the disobeying of the moral standards and rules. This can be seen in the beginning of the movie, before the doctor's traffic accident, when the doctor drove after having a fight with his wife, who, on the other hand behaved badly towards her child. She was smoking in front of him and even let the child light her cigarette. In the movie we can see various examples of breaking the moral standards. The doctor aimed to respect the morality, even throwing the money amounting to few thousand Euros because they were given to him as a bribe. He did this to respect one of the Ten Commandments – do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. He didn't want to steal and he was ready to help people even in the case of the old lady, that he took to the hospital. In other cases other doctors would say – I would not bother with her, she is old anyway. Doctor Lazar didn't want to commit adultery as an individual whereas everybody around him did. And, finally when he fulfills the task for the mother – the duty given by the church, to bury the bones or else the ghosts would not have peace. Now, a question arises as to where does this sense of morality arise in today's times of high immorality, when the world is in a chaotic state due to sins. Does this glimpse of moral value erupt only at unique individuals who remain heroes in comparison to the other immoral people. Is the source of sin in the fantasies – as in the lesbian scene between the doctor's wife and Menka? It seems like Manchevski subconsciously suggests that this could indeed be the source of all evil.

In conclusion, I believe that Manchevski would like to send a message through this movie that we should act humane and according to the moral standards for this world to become a better place

Manchevski disappointed me with this one. From a guy who has created Before the Rain I was waiting much more. He obviously has talent and it shows with the photography. The Ohrid lake shots are fantastic.

In terms of the plot, Shadows is blatantly plagiarizing Sixth Sense. It is annoyingly similar. The only difference is that there's no twist. We know it all almost from the beginning. Which actually makes it boring. Especially when we get the same shock-effect scene again and again and again.

Now the sex element. Why? We're getting gratuitous sex scenes for no particular reason. Not that I don't like the girls, especially Vesna Stanojevska, but someone should tell our friend Milcho that it has to blend with the plot!

And finally, being from Greece, I have to comment on the "Aegean Macedonians" issue. I couldn't fail to notice some sneaky propaganda attempts in secondary parts of the plot. I mean "exodus" and ...napalm bombs? In ...1913? This is honestly bordering the ridiculous. I could write a whole essay on where these ideas come from (may well be a part of a general nationalistic awakening in our neighbor state), however let me simply mention that the story of "Aegean Macedonians" (a very controversial term by itself) is far more complex than what people are led to believe from this film. I would be grateful if Manchevski left politics and history to people who actually know a thing or two.

I am very disappointed after watching Manchevski's film this evening. I came to the screening with his masterpiece "Before the Rain" in mind but some of the elements that struck me most about the film were endlessly recycled imageries of death/memory/temporal boundaries, exoticized depictions of landscape, identity and cultural otherness, tautological and often overstated motifs of death and desire, which literally drown the spectator into a sea of clichéd, old-fashioned psychological thriller formulas. Don't get me wrong, I like films which foreground their rich, highly-tuned semiotic texture and which interweave symbolic structures skilfully and compellingly. But here this twofold directorial temptation towards the symbolic and the literal doesn't quite pay off cinematically. The music is great, some of the montage is also powerful, the initial spatio-temporal build-up promising, but the film never quite takes off for me. The surreal, nightmarish, ghostly presences that populate the screen and Lazar's troubled mind amount, in my opinion, to some of the interesting cinematic effects of the film.

Doctor Lazar Perkov has just returned to his apartment in Skopje from his parents' villa in the lakes district after a year convalescing from a near-fatal car crash.He tries to return to work at the hospital,but his nightmares won't help him.He forgets things,fears his recovery isn't stable and has now had his first visit from the disturbed souls of the dead(the old lady and the creepy looking guy with unbaptized infant).I saw "Senki" during Warsaw Film Festival and I was a little bit disappointed.The film is too long and quite dull in spots.It offers some beautiful photography of Macedonian landscapes,some scenes are pretty moving,but the horror elements are weak.Still there are four lovely sex scenes with a good dose of female nudity to keep me happy.6 out of 10.