joerospopo
This abomination reminded me of Heaven's Gate -- not the film, just the feeling of sitting through it.What starts out interesting and promising degenerates into pointless, unfathomable mush. However, the fact that the two lead actors wail and shriek a lot does seem a clever way to disguise that (1) they are British w/appropriate accents and (2) the script is inane.I need to write some more lines, but that would just waste words so I will repeat paragraph 2:What starts out interesting and promising degenerates into pointless, unfathomable mush. However, the fact that the two lead actors wail and shriek a lot does seem a clever way to disguise that (1) they are British w/appropriate accents and (2) the script is inane.The director hasn't worked since 2010. This probably does not include his janitorial work, for which he is eminently qualified.What a mess!
isabelle1955
It's taken me a while to catch up with this intriguing movie. Switching on the subtitles second time around, to translate the German, was a revelation. Any movie which makes me put my brain in gear (a novel idea in current cinema) can't be bad; I like being intrigued. But don't watch Dust if you are looking for an easy ride. Somewhere I read this rather pompous assessment: "this film should not be judged according to standardised measures used when conventionally analysing a Hollywood style movie". .Well OK. But if you can find it on the shelf of your local video store then I'm afraid it IS going to be judged by those standards. Personally I think the story of Luke and Elijah stands up perfectly well. I'm not so certain about the rest.The obvious stylistic comparisons are with Sergio Leoni's Spaghetti Westerns, (I've seen Dust described as a Baklava Western, but that's too easy). Spaghetti Western meets Magical Realism, with some heavy-handed irony about contemporary Balkans politics thrown in? A complex tale of love, revenge and redemption set across generations and continents, exploring storytelling, myth and the tragedy of war? Or could it just be a confusing movie told in flashback that doesn't quite work. Who knows? Maybe all of the above. Dust's an interesting tale set in a corner of Europe little explored in mainstream western cinema. Had they stuck with the tale set in Macedonia, it would have worked better. But this is a film that tries to be all things to all people, not quite pulling it off.Director Milcho Manchevski uses our generally poor understanding of this region's troubled history to great effect. It's hard to tell who is killing who and why. But that's the point. Joe Average involved in this thuggery had probably long since lost track of who did what to whom and why in the endless rounds of attack and counter attack. My own difficulty in distinguishing baddies from goodies among the factions is probably a fair reflection of the situation that existed on the ground (in this and many other wars), where atrocities abound on all sides, greed rules, and mostly it's the poor and downtrodden who end up dead.Into this confused mix comes Luke (David Wenham), an amoral American cowboy escaping his past, who sees an opportunity to use his killing skills to exploit the situation and make some money as a bounty hunter. The movie is set between the 19th and 20th centuries, and Luke, a man who lives and dies by the gun, is a metaphor for the transition from the old world to the modern world. He is told at one point, "The day you see a flying machine you'll know you're a dead man". But Luke can't understand, because he doesn't speak the language, literally or figuratively. Chasing Luke, comes his younger brother Elijah (Joseph Fiennes), bent on retribution for the wrong Luke did to him back home. Their story unfolds years later, told in flashback through the revelations of an old woman dying in New York, to a modern thug Edge (wonderful Adrian Lester) who has broken into her apartment thieving, and gotten more than he bargained for when she pistol whips him into submission, forcing him to listen to her ramblings. Her link to the story is apparent by the end.The story itself, although interesting and original, is full of holes. Even accepting the unlikely scenario of country boy, monosyllabic Luke winding up in the Balkans, I never could quite accept how easily Elijah tracked him down across Europe. I was irritated by Luke's magical bullets, taking out 6 people at a time from an astonishing range, while he himself survived everything thrown at him. And Edge, the thug with a heart of gold, taking granny's ashes back to Macedonia at the end almost blew the whole thing for me. This was not a movie that required a feel good ending. Giving it one was a cop out. It mystifies me why Manchevski introduced such cliché into what had been, up until then, an interesting if flawed film.Despite my frustrations, it would be petty of me to suggest that the flaws ruin this movie. They don't. In Macedonia, Manchevski is working in his own land and it shows. It's a stunning movie to look at, beautifully photographed, well produced and edited, with some nice visual details, (Luke bleeding picturesquely across the Karst limestone landscape comes readily to mind), and the villages and peasants look appropriately grubby. The Macedonian locations are worth the rental price alone. The copious blood, the fly blown corpses and food (this is not a movie for the weak of stomach) are reminiscent of the best spaghetti westerns, and the movie has enough interesting characters to keep the audience engaged. I wanted to know where it was going, how it would end and whether Luke could find redemption.As for the performances, I've seen Joseph Fiennes do better work but he has little to do here beyond being gruff and biblical. However, I thought this was one of David Wenham's most interesting roles. If this guy isn't a bigger name in America, I have to assume it's because he doesn't want to be. He has a really menacing presence in this role. We've seen David Wenham do noble (LOTR), touchingly hopeless (Getting' Square), bemused and cute (Better than Sex), drowning emotionally (After the Deluge) and coolly efficient (The Bank). Here we see he can play menacing too, although I found his period American accent erratic, so I'm glad the emphasis was on his physical acting rather than his dialogue. It was perhaps disappointing that the younger women were given little of consequence to do beyond looking symbolic, displaying their pretty bodies and tenderly mopping wounds, but Rosemary Murphy was feisty as the old lady in New York. Well worth watching
