Senki

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

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.

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 think that there are problems with the plot regarding the disconnected sex scenes, and the generally missed point in the movie. It could have been made better. I don't think it is a replica of the "Sixth Sense", I see no resemblance in the plot between these two movies. Also, as far as the Aegean Macedonians are concerned, I think the the movie does not mention the exodus of the 1913 and the use of the napalm bombs at that time. It just scarcely mentions the events following the partition of Macedonia. It mentions the exodus during the WW II, and especially during the Greek civil war following the WW II, when indeed there was an exodus of the Aegean Macedonians and the Greek forces and its allies did use napalm bombs to destroy forces of the Communist led coalition, but instead mostly civilians and villages were hit by those bombs. Those who survived were exiled into Eastern Europe and today's Republic of Macedonia (then part of federal Yugoslavia). So those are the facts briefly mentioned. So the movie does not say at all that this exodus happened in 1913, but after 1913 when part of Macedonia was seized by Greece. In any way, most viewers will not focus on that part of the story as those events are just scarcely treated, and implied. They are secondary to the main story. I think it is absolutely unfair and wrong to see that as propaganda.