Armand it is a film about the dust of words. about power of self definition. about death. and hate. about courage. and a deformed universe. each character is letter of a testimony. each testimony is another cold circle of ash.and nothing else. a monk, a girl, a photographer. a village as scene of a profound crime. sure, it is slice from a war. but this war has not end. it is expectation, desire, ladder. a seed as demolition of another old order. for this cause the film is touching and impressive. because it is clear. and honest. because is a picture. the places, the dialogs, the borders of circles are only shadows of events. three stories. and the cruel silence. that is all.

billcr12 Before the Rain has a similar format to Babel, with three separate stories which come together at the end. In the first, a young monk has taken a vow of silence and is protecting Zamira, an Aobanian girl on the run from the mob. He leaves the monastery and travels throughout Macedonia with her, attempting to escape.The second chapter involves a photo editor in London, having to choose between her husband, Nick, and a war photographer, Aleksandar. She gets caught up in a series of tragic events, beginning with a shoot out at a restaurant. The third segment ties the first two together through somewhat confusing flashbacks, and one scene, in particular is a definite timeline mistake. I sent an email to the director, and he says that it was intentional. Poetic license was is reasoning. The movie is a violent but realistic depiction of the war in the former Yugoslavia. There are no winners, only victims of another stupid and pointless conflict. Before the Rain is an excellent drama.

anthony_retford Obviously most people are enthralled with this movie. I wasn't. The music was good but the cinematography was lacking - too many shots shown over again. I watch a lot of foreign movies and, I guess, unfortunately had just watched "A Very Long Engagement" with cinematography that excelled. I suppose the message in Before The Rain was that time may not have been circular but it certainly comes back onto itself. The feeling I had was that the writer wanted to paint this little universe, which always repeated itself. Was this plot anything to do with the reality we all live in? No! We live in a linear reality and we don't see pictures of things that haven't happened yet. I thought it was more than depressing that the cycle the writer chose was punctuated with fusillades of gunfire from start to end. I thought "Dark Country" made better use of an enclosed circular universe.I also found the likelihood that someone could return to his old home after 16 years false, especially with the tribality and backwardness of the inhabitants which he had outgrown shortly after leaving. I have been traveling for 7 years and things are different. I could not go back to what was and be a part of those I knew. So the idea that Rade, world-wise traveler thought he could just enter his old stomping grounds did not make sense. He would have had more sense, particularly when he was met by a gun-toting guard. When he first arrived he saw his house had been abandoned so how could he not understand his old life had also been abandoned?

walter_moreno It's one of the best films that I've ever seen. I saw it many times, including the theatre sessions, when it was on screens. Photography, scriptwriting, direction, characters are in such a harmony that makes difficult to tell what is best in this films. The perfection of the text is so that the connections between characters and the film chronology can close in a circle without really closing it. The main sentence "The circle is not round" is both touching and intelligent, revealing the spiral of mankind's stubbornness violence - that never gets to an end - as the essence of the story. So up to date that unreasonable violence still keeps its turn, nowadays: like it happened in London, in the film, and today(10/08), at the airports. The soundtrack by "Anastácia" is also fantastic; and fits well with the atmosphere of the film.