Powerful and intriguing
- Honeyland review by PD
Directed by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, this film is a documentary about the life and labours of one Hatidze Muratova. Originally commissioned to make a video about conservation efforts in Macedonia, the filmmakers apparently spent three years with Hatidze, and as a result, the film is great at recording the rhythms and textures of rural life, the directors shaping their observations into a neorealist fable; an impossibly stirring tale of struggle, persistence and change.
Hatidze lives with her mother Nazife, who is bedridden and partly blind, a dog named Jackie, a few cats, and ... quite a few industrious bees. Hatidze’s methods are intimate and humane; she’s endowed with a loving touch that, seemingly, the bees and the other animals recognise. She speaks to them and sings to them, but, above all, she nurtures and nourishes them, telling the bees, “half for you, half for me”, treating the hives that she sustains on another rock wall, alongside her home, with familial care. And Hatidze isn’t entirely isolated from the rest of the world. Skopje is only a little more than 12 miles away, and she travels there, on foot and by train, to sell her honey. Because of its superior quality and her shrewdness, it fetches a good price. But just as we are settling into Hatidze’s company, appreciating the edges and contours of her personality and savouring the deep pleasure of her work, the pastoral calm is shattered by a family rumbling into the village in a noisy trailer that turns out to be the quietest thing about it. At first, Hatidze welcomes these neighbours - Turkish speakers like her, but the the sheer chaos that surrounds them conspire to disrupt Hatidze’s routines. From this point the film unfolds with a novelistic intricacy and tightly sprung dramatic mechanism, and we get caught up in its destructive power, its brewing enmities, and its overarching, tragic sense of the disturbance of cosmic order.
Films of this kind inevitably raise questions - I found myself wondering what she thought of the filmmakers who were following her on this perilous mission—how she and they arranged the shooting, and what effect the filmmakers’ presence had on her. Solitude is one of the film’s prime subjects and also its dramatic mainspring, and its details and practicalities are merely hinted at, and rather unexplored. Much of the movie is filmed in the Muratova home; Hatidze displays the daily details of her domestic life and her labours to the filmmakers, who must have virtually lived with her for the time while they were filming. But the terms of their complicity, the relationship that they and Hatidze share, remain a somewhat frustrating blank. However, for all of this, this is powerful, intriguing work.
9 out of 9 members found this review helpful.
Restores faith in the medium of film
- Honeyland review by TE
Every so often a film comes along which defies conventional analysis. The 'docu-drama' genre is a good source of such films, and Honeyland is an outstanding example.
The review by PD contains a lot of helpful detail, and an important questioning. Ultimately the film succeeds on several levels, from the visually stunning cinematography to the allegorical message implicit in the despoiling of Hatidze's bee colony.
This is simply a magnificent example of the power of film to inform and to advocate.
5 out of 5 members found this review helpful.
Outstanding
- Honeyland review by IG
Stunning portrait of a dignified woman whose life is beyond anything I have experience of, beautiful and very moving.
4 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
A rare insight into Macedonian rural life
- Honeyland review by CD
This is a real triumph of capturing what must be a fast disappearing world in Macedonia and the Balkans. Ironically The challenge to Hatidze and her bees is less modernism than the movement of a large and rather chaotic family and their cattle who take up residence nearby. The treatment by the film of the family is compassionate, but steadily Hatidze's life with her bees is eroded, although there is hope of a return to normality by the end. The film is quite raw and unsentimental at times, but brings out the humanity of all those involved. The relationship between Hatidze and her ageing mother is beatifully told. It must have been tricky to get the bees to follow the script, but generally they seem to behave quite well!
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
INSPIRING STORY OF RURAL SUBSISTENCE
- Honeyland review by dspc
This is a beautifully told story of rural life in mountainous Macedonia where a single woman ekes out a frugal existence while caring for her aged and bed-ridden mother. Her sole income comes from the sale of honey which she collects from her hives and wild bee-colonies; it is interrupted by the arrival of a livestock farmer next door who tries to set up bee hives in competition.
The worry of the damage done to bee stocks by this development is gently counterpointed by the affecton she feels for the young children of the farming family who are also suffering from poor agricultural market conditions; eventually they fail and have to move back to the city.
The intimacy of the tale is highlighted by wonderful photography and a sympathetic examination of rural life in the Macedonian highlands.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Stepping into another world
- Honeyland review by CP Customer
Stepping into another world and seeing the conflicts of drastically different approaches to life. Such a powerful way of showing how life has changed and what is needed in the world namely respect for nature.
The main character is such an interesting woman.
An aside, I was left with a great yearning for proper honey like you never see normally.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Magical snapshot
- Honeyland review by MD
Loved this movie from the minute I saw the trailer. A really good insight into the life and work of the last wild bee hunter in Europe. The scenery was breath taking
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Fascinating
- Honeyland review by JK
I wrote a long review of this brilliant documentary/film a couple of weeks ago and it vanished from the site! Suffice to say that this is a superb watch and I couldn't recommend it more.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
A Honeyed Life
- Honeyland review by RCO
While watching I wasn't aware that this was a documentary - the narrative seemed to good to have happened accidentally, but much of it looked like documentary - the children clearly weren't actors, and the gaps and moments missed probably wouldn't happen in a fully constructed movie.
The scenery and people and lives depicted are stunning. The embers of a dying way of living still flickering in the the forgotten corners of Europe, and the fully embodied wisdom that such a life requires seem extraordinary to those of us trapped in a consumer-capitalist culture.
A major missing element, as a documentary, is any evidence of the relationship between the film-makers and the subjects. They apparently spent three years shooting the film, but in doing so they have erased their own presence. This inevitably raises questions as to the extent to which events were manipulated or reconstructed.
Hatidze's acceptance of the family passing through her life and their impact on her is an object lesson in the benefits of adaptability and living well based on being true to your self in relation to the world.
In the end, as in our world, life goes on. The bees return, Hatidze, and the mountains that created her, will persist even as their seasons change. A very affirmative film.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Where reality is inseparable from fiction
- Honeyland review by RH
a film like no other.
A story...a documentary.... a biography....a story...
3 years to make a movie, wow. nothing worth doing is ever easy
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.