As a dicovery documentary fan, I basically don't have much impression of other documentaries. The basic impression of a documentary is also a film where some trivial things and nagging are put together. But this documentary has refreshed my understanding of documentaries.
Different from the previous documentaries, this is a documentary with a plot, more than 3 years of follow-up time, 400 hours of film, edited into 2 hours.
It's been quite a few days since I read it. I stop writing and stop writing, and I will code when I have time. What I like most is the quietness and desolation in the film, and the loneliness of Hades.
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Macedonia, a country that is both familiar and unfamiliar. In ancient times, Alexander the Great swept the history of Europe by slaughtering the powerful empire of Persia to unify Greece. A relatively barren country after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in modern times. In fact, the country in the film refers to North Macedonia (the country was renamed North Macedonia under pressure from Greece), one of the regions of Macedonia in ancient times.
As the last female bee-picker in Europe, Hades retains the most primitive way of collecting honey. Always take half and keep half for the gift of nature. Hades has a semi-blind mother, and the two have been dependent on each other. In the first half of the paragraph, looking at the very ordinary conversation, I always thought that she could not leave this barren place because she needed to take care of her mother.
Suddenly one day, a noise broke Hades' quiet life. A family of seven came next door, the noise of the car and the seven people and a pile of livestock. This is a moving family, and the film edited out is completely the image of a predator, plundering wherever he goes. As the father of the film said, children are their wealth, so the more they are born, the more they are born. This is indeed the case. In a backward place, people's thinking always stays at a certain moment. If there are more births, there will always be one who will shine in the future, bringing some hope to this poor family or family. Endlessly destroying the ecological balance and plundering resources, the director actually deliberately edited the neighbor to look like this. They are no different from most of the ordinary people over there. Yes, a barren land with no resources. They can only rely on the mountains to eat the mountains, the sea to eat the sea, and rely on whatever resources they have to live on.
The neighbor's father learned the beekeeping method from Hades, but later abandoned it all, took all the honey, and left no trace, and even took the honey collector to the wild to find Hades' wild bees, Even the honeycombs are sawed away with the wood. Only Hades is left in the camera, crying against the remaining broken wood and the hive. In fact, this neighbor's father did all this just for the tuition of a child who has reached school age.
Here are some comments talking about the nobility of human nature. Before solving the problem of food and clothing, all human nature has become so worthless. Recalling a funny joke from before, a rich kid saw that the poor had no food and asked his father why they didn't eat bread and milk. Very ironic.
The main purpose of the documentary is to restore the truth, so in fact, those comments said why the director team did not stop the behavior that disrupted the ecological balance is the reason.
Maybe it was God's will, or maybe it was a coincidence that the neighbors suffered too, because 50 cows died because of honey picking. It was later moved out due to exhaustion of resources. Noisy to come, noisy to go, leaving a large mess.
One winter day as usual, Hades tunes the only entertainment in the house - the radio. A bedridden mother in her 80s has died.
The film does not contain any footage of the funeral. Only one night, Hades took the torch to drive away the wolf in the distance in the dark night. Probably because the wolf howl would devour the soul that had gone away.
There are many clips in the film that will give you the illusion that Hades has no choice but to leave this place because he is taking care of his mother. But sometimes she also wants to escape the place.
In 1964, she was 56 this year. In fact, she had long missed the marriage. But in the bottom of my heart, I still long for someone who can take her to escape this desolate place.
Although in the end, she still did not leave this place. Because it seems like she is really apart from here, no where to go.
But I believe that after this film, her life will be changed dramatically. This was also an important turning point in her life.
--one half for me, one half for you.
One of the best documentaries I've seen this year, I really love the long shots in it.
4.8 stars.
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