MUBI

From what I’ve read at Criterion, this is deemed the first film made in the new Republic of Macedonia which officially seceded from Yugoslavia in ‘91. I thought it’d be interesting to check out based on that reason alone but this can rival most any contemporary anti-war film out there; it’s pretty intense at times and the way it concludes is solid. The movie reminded me of Pulp Fiction in a key way and one could understand why once he/she sees it. But aside from any selling points or comparisons, Rain can definitely stand on its own as simply a great film.

Before the Rain is a timeless ode to the futility of war. A triptych which remains suspended in the consciousness of the viewer long after the credits rolls. For here is a film with, no end? – or maybe better stated – an end which has lost the substance of it’s beginning? Much like it’s subject the impetus of the film vanishes the instant an effort is made to define it. Why did this all begin and where does it end?

This film is a monumental achievement. It takes aim at the pointless vagaries of war and ethnic hatred and leaves them hanging in a tenuous balance. That unnerving ache pitted in the recesses of the soul finds no relief for there is no resolution to this bitter tale of man’s inhumanity to man. Before the Rain reaches that pinnacle where art transcends it’s subject. If every man who ever picked up arms against another had the same realization as the war photographer played by Rade Serbedzija, war – much like the plot of this film – would vanish the instant an effort was made to determine it’s cause.

Milcho Manchevski’s realization of vision lives in the grandest tradition of art. Not just motion pictures but, any medium. Much like Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ before it ‘Before the Rain’ immortalizes it’s subject. Would the deaths of 673 soldiers in the Crimea be anymore immune to the weathering of time than the deaths of Macedonians and Albanians at each others hands without artistic vision seen to fruition?

Additionally, art often brings reason to bear on social injustice. And to this, ‘Before the Rain’ is no exception. Any attempt to justify the violence depicted in this film becomes pointless in the light of the futility of the plot. This movie is a masterwork of a great director, that elusive point where vision and humanity intersect. This is where film-making approximates a truism and in itself requires no explanation. As vision yields art, reason makes it timeless.

This is cinema at it’s finest. The point where art defies explanation and turns back in on itself, as endless as time itself.