After the past eight years (group hug), it’s easy to misremember the 1990s as pure bliss. Wasn’t the news all good under the Seinfeld administration (or whoever) as we danced in an endless conga line to the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony?” Sigh. Oh — but wait! Remember the Balkans?
Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain (the Criterion Collection edition is now available on DVD) was the first film out of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia in 1994 — when the bloody ethnic conflicts in neighboring countries threatened to spill over at any moment. Seemingly random characters (a silent monk, a weary war photographer) leapfrog between Macedonia and London as Manchevski effectively employs a Tarantinoesque style of nonlinear scene placement. The message and symbols may come off a smidge heavy-handed at times, but he was there in the thick of it, after all, and when someone’s shouting “Fire!” you can’t request an indoor voice. After watching, if you’re still uncertain where Macedonia lies, look it up — it’s just around the corner from Afghanistan and Iraq.
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