Senki (2007)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Milcho Manchevski

Writer:

Milcho Manchevski (writer)

Release Date:

4 September 2008 (Hungary)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Sometimes the dead speak louder than the living

Plot:

The son of a reputable physician struggles to live up to other people's expectations of him. |

Plot Keywords:

Peasant | Surrealism | Macedonia | Threesome | Family Relationships

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Borce Nacev	...	Dr Lazar Perkov
Vesna Stanojevska	...	Menka
Sabina Ajrula	...	Dr. Vera Perkova (as Sabina Ajrula-Tozija)
Salaetin Bilal	...	Gerasim
Ratka Radmanovic	...	Kalina
Filareta Atanasova	...	Gordana
Dime Ilijev	...	Ignjat Perkov
Petar Mircevski	...	Blagojce
Vladimir Jacev	...	Siskin
Goce Vlahov	...	Professor Kokale
Ana Kostovska	...	Radmila
Zaklina Stefkovska	...	Paca
Izabela Novotni	...	Izabela
Ilko Stefanovski	...	Dr Karpuzovski
Vanja Radmilovic	...	Ivana

Also Known As:

Shadows (International: English title) (USA) (new title)

Runtime:

Canada:120 min (Toronto International Film Festival) | USA:130 min

Country:

Republic of Macedonia | Germany | Italy | Bulgaria | Spain

Language:

Macedonian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Canada:14A | Singapore:R21 | Mexico:B15

Filming Locations:

Ohrid, Macedonia

Company:

Blue Eyes Fiction

Trivia:

Right after the hospital scene ends, when the two kids bring the overdosed girl, the director Milcho Manchevski can be seen on the computer screen before it displays Lazar's wife and son.

Disappointing

I am very disappointed after watching Manchevski's film this evening. I came to the screening with his masterpiece "Before the Rain" in mind but some of the elements that struck me most about the film were endlessly recycled imageries of death/memory/temporal boundaries, exoticized depictions of landscape, identity and cultural otherness, tautological and often overstated motifs of death and desire, which literally drown the spectator into a sea of clichéd, old-fashioned psychological thriller formulas. Don't get me wrong, I like films which foreground their rich, highly-tuned semiotic texture and which interweave symbolic structures skilfully and compellingly. But here this twofold directorial temptation towards the symbolic and the literal doesn't quite pay off cinematically. The music is great, some of the montage is also powerful, the initial spatio-temporal build-up promising, but the film never quite takes off for me. The surreal, nightmarish, ghostly presences that populate the screen and Lazar's troubled mind amount, in my opinion, to some of the interesting cinematic effects of the film.