Reviews

i've seen this movie recently, on Belgrade Film Festival (FEST), and i was delighted. although nobody expected it (numerous movies were shown on FEST, from across the world, some of them hailed by film critics - like "Vera Drake", directed by Mike Leigh), "Iluzija" was the best film shown of festival, and not only because of the "clever metaphors", or actors performances (although both of this elements are excellently controlled), but because of straight, concentrated, well-narrated story, with clear and precise beginning-middle-end structure, and with lots of details that are creating dangerous and mean universe (picture of Balkan under NATO "protectors") of the movie. of course, viewer who knows facts about Macedonia-Balkan-ex-Yugoslavia can see some of the best artistic comments on reality of the countries in so-called "transition", and also political-incorrectness (if you consider the critic of EU-USA attitude on "small countries" to be uncorrected). and when you are thinking about the movie in-whole, you can realize why's there a Nietzsche quotation on the movies beginning. but, there's a lot of philosophy in it, so we are leaving that story for another time, and another place...

An interesting idea, but poor realisation. I have watched this movie on the festival of so-called "author-film", and it seemed to me that kinds of movies like this one are representing an excuse for lack of good story, lack of well-written script, and all that behind the wall of "author" or "European" way of film-making. You know, if you can offer a story about Balkan as a place of war-all-the-time, and if you add some bad melodrama to it, about broken homes and hearts, you can count on sentiment of the West public. But, when the public recognizes that the director is playing it low, aiming only on your emotions, without the artistic quality, the whole movie is falling apart. And, after some time, and numerous bad movies on that subject, there will be very hard to make that West-European or American public to watch movies about war in ex-Yugoslavia, even the good ones. It seems that director wanted realistic, natural acting, but the main actors are unconvincing, especially in sentimental scene, where the girl is telling to her brother about her daughter. It is not clear what exactly happened, and why the protagonist (he looks like Travis Bickle, that is the better part of his role) throw the bomb on icon ("killed the saint").

Apart from that, the movie becomes, on some parts, unwatchable boring. Too bad.