Review
YOU WON’T BE ALONE – Review
With a story built around witches, the East European-set YOU WON’T BE ALONE certainly starts out like a horror film set in a medieval-ish rural Eastern European world. The location brings to mind a host of classic horror films and legends, and the time period setting and other elements are reminiscent of 2015’s THE WITCH. But the film soon turns in a somewhat different direction, towards fairy-tale. The Brothers Grimm variety, not Disney.
If you’ll remember, those original tales are often dark and even horror-like but also have elements of kindness and hope along with the terror and gruesomeness, in their good versus evil struggles. The fairy tale/folk tale of YOU WON’T BE ALONE leans more into the human side of the story of its villain and its young heroine, and also has a feminist viewpoint, making this tale much more layered and complex. There is a reason behind the older witch’s unquenchable anger, which we learn mid-way through, but the young witch is not always good or kind either, like heroes and heroines in fairy tales sometimes can be.
The tale opens in a rural, medieval-ish Macedonia (although it is supposedly the 19th century), with a cat walking across a grass field. As the cat walks off screen, we hear a terrible cry, but then the cat walks back on screen. We follow the cat to a village, where a woman tending her baby, leaves briefly to shoo away mischievous playing neighboring children. Returning inside her home, she finds a strange, disfigured woman standing over her baby.
The woman is covered in scars from burns (in an impressive feat of make-up) yet she has a powerful presence about her. It is clear the mother recognizes her, and the terrified woman immediately begins to beg for the life of her child, telling the burnt woman (Anamaria Marinca, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) how sorry she is about what happened to her. Specifics are not spoken but we know immediately the strange woman was burned as a witch. The mother starts bargaining, telling the witch that “babies are such a bother” and saying she can raise her until she is sixteen and then bring her to the witch. “So you won’t be alone in your old age,” the desperate mother says. A bargain of sorts is stuck with the witch, but it is not what the mother hopes for, and the baby is both marked by the witch and struck mute.
The mother hides her child in a cave, where the girl grows up alone except for visits by her fearful mother. Despite the mother’s efforts, the witch still comes for her daughter Nevena (Sara Klimoska) when she turns 16, takes her away, and turns her into a witch like herself.
That has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it? While there are elements of classic fairy-tales here, as well as mythology and folk tales, this engrossing tale also is full of twists we don’t see coming and deeper human meaning. The film’s Macedonian-Australian director/writer Goran Stolevski was inspired by the Macedonian folk tales he grew up with for his script, which also has something timeless to say. The film is an Australian production but it is in Macedonian with subtitles and was shot in Serbia. YOU WON’T BE ALONE is Goran Stolevski’s first feature film, and it is an impressive debut.
The witch that Anamaria Marinca plays with impressive power is known as Old Maid Maria and she is actually a mythical creature called a Wolf-Eateress, a combination witch, vampire, werewolf and skin-walker/zombie that stalks the countryside drinking the blood of peasants. Far from a mindless monster, Maria is a cunning, and angry, creature, more human than we expect, with a real, understandable reason for her rage. The witch is able to take the form of any person or animal but it must die for her to assume its form, leaving a bloody smear behind.
There are moments of blood and violence that the more-squeamish should be warned about but this film is also not typical horror film fare. This film is not non-stop horror action, and the scary or bloody moments are interspersed with long contemplative moments, as the young woman promised to the witch struggles to understand the world and herself. The story is steeped in elements of fairy-tale and folk tale but it all unfolds at a more contemplative pace that brings Terrence Malick’s films to mind, as do the scenes of fields of waving wheat and the stream-of-conscious voice-over by the mute main character. However, those dreamy sequences are punctuated by confrontations, dramatic twists and sometime bloody violence. Both Maria’s story and Nevena’s experiences with the rural folk, as the young witch adopts various people’s lives, have a feminist bent, focusing on the historic treatment of women, patriarchy, and witch-burning hysteria. It is a film that is hard to categorize but one that draws you in.
Shot on location in rural Serbia, the photography by cinematographer Matthew Chuang is lush and grounded in the natural, and the film’s contemplative tone is supported by a score that includes Macedonian folk tunes, gentle classical, and a couple of pieces by composer Arvo Part.
Anamaria Marinca’s Old Maid Maria is a cunning, angry being who wants to see everyone suffer, including her young charge. But she despairs of Sara Klimoska’s soft-hearted young Nevena, and the older witch is frustrated in her attempts to mold the gentle teen into a cold-hearted witch like herself. There is always tension and foreboding present in this film, and a longing by the girl, for a childhood and human life she missed out on, fueling a curiosity about the ordinary farm folk around her.
The young witch watches the older witch, her mentor/adopted mother, as she takes various forms and feeds on the villagers from time to time. When the young witch accidentally kills a young farm woman, Bosilka (Noomi Rapace, GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO), the young witch adopts her identity, by using what she has learned from the Wolf-Eateress, as a way to escape.
Nevena has an air of innocence as we see her move through various forms, with several actors, including Noomi Rapace, Carloto Cotta, Anastasija Karanovich and Alice Englert, playing the main character. In these forms, she tries out various roles in the human rural society, with indirect commentary on the structure of that society. Often the young witch’s lack of experience with normal human life leads to trouble and forces her to move on, but the changes are also her attempts to find her place in the world, to have the experience she needs to understand human life.
Details on the plot are likely to be spoilers but there are plenty of twists, just at a slower place than would be in a typical horror movie. The voice-over is philosophical more than something providing exposition for the story, which largely is told visually. That can make the film challenging at times, but director Goren Stolevski trusts the audience to look closely, think and figure things out, relying on the strong cast to convey any needed information.
Fortunately, the acting is consistently strong from all the cast, which adds greatly to a story that is more often told through what we see than what we hear.
The hard-to-categorize YOU WON’T BE ALONE isn’t for every audience, but for those approaching it with an opening mind, it has rewards as it makes its way through its deeply human folk tale.
YOU WON’T BE ALONE, in Macedonian with English subtitles, opens Friday, April 1, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.
RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars
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