Milcho Manchevski’s Willow, which premiered in Italy last year, is one of the highlights of the CineJoy film festival. It has the feel of a sprawling, big budget drama with multiple locations in rural and urban Macedonia, spanning hundreds of years. The cinematography is crisp. There’s a bleakness captured in the diverse settings, whether we’re looking at the muddy, hard-scrabble life of superstitious serfs or the cash-strapped, hustling lives of street performers and taxi drivers.
In some ways, I think it feels a little like a more disciplined Cloud Atlas, which I know is going to be a bit of a divisive as a comparison. There are ways in which Willow’s transition in the second act does not quite seem to accomplish everything it sets out to do, especially since the third act switches the perspective to a different character in the second act. We dwell on the struggles of a mother with an adopted child rather than seeking comparisons with a new time period. The film ends up feeling a little lopsided, when what appears to be intended is an imagistic pastiche of stories, variations on a theme.
The love story in the second act is the most interesting, in part because of the twists and turns, the reveals of their struggles with pregnancy, surgery, and money. The couple’s whirlwind meet-cute is fresh and challenging. The end of the second act is gripping and unexpected too.
I’m trying not to judge too harshly the drama that’s clearly intended in the apparent disability of the young child of the third act. There’s some savior-complex themes weaving their way through there, though we spend a whole lot of the final third of the movie chasing down a child who constantly disappears–come to think of it, this is part of the theme of the first act as well. There are some interesting things being done in the storytelling of this movie: it’s sexy and soulful and emotional without being schmaltzy or maudlin.
