val-soph

Unexpected movie, to say the least.

My mother insisted we go see this film. To be honest, I wasn't too excited about it-but to please her, I agreed. Being a Serb myself, and knowing it was a Serbian production, I expected yet another story about Serbian suffering in Kosovo (a common theme). But the movie truly surprised me.

It's a story about hatred and suffering-and neither has a single face. At times, I loved both the Serb and the Albanian characters; at other times, I hated them both. The funeral scene at the end profoundly moved me. In the end, we all suffer as we bury our dead. Our minds become consumed by ideas that serve the interests of a malicious few, while it is we-ordinary people-who pay the price in blood.

I don't even remember how many times I have seen this movie. I seem to come back to it any time I go through a heartbreak, and this time is no different. It reminds me of what it's like to love someone when you're young - you don't think about the circumstances or how you're going to do it, you just love.

This year, I discovered that the movie was based on a true story, that actually happened to the director! His story had a bitter ending though. He learned, as he was releasing 'Before Sunset', that the girl he had met had died in a motorcycle crash in 1994, even before 'Before Sunrise' was released. That really made a dent in my heart. How poignant. The fact that he still made 'Before Midnight', imagining their lives together, really made my heart whole. 10/10.

Right off the bat, we are thrown into Lars' fantastic world where love is the highest moral good. It's the premise that colors the whole narrative, making us imagine a whole new world...

Bess is so poignantly naive, it's impossible not to empathize with her. She got me right in the feels, I wanted so badly to rescue her, and shower her with that very same love she was so freely giving away to others. Childlike but never pathetic, faithful but never fanatic, she goes with the flow, molding the reality for herself. Her love is unconditional, motherly, sweet, and scary. She does not question; instead, she reacts from deep within - her soul-wrenching truth is an offering to all of us who have watched this movie. It swallows us whole.