Milcho Manchevski’sBefore the Rainand the Ethics of Listening

Abstract

An artistic, popular, and critical success, the filmBefore the Rain(1994), written and directed by Macedonian-American Milcho Manchevski, has been the subject of much critical work largely dominated by issues related to the setting of the story (early 1990s Balkans) and also by the concepts of seeing, watching, and being watched, and the relation of all this with the Balkan discourses. Gordana P. Crnković argues for moving away from this framework in order to explore the film's aesthetic achievements operating in a different sphere, and specifically the film's creation of the practice of proper listening taken in a more philosophical sense envisioned by Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Gemma Corradi Fiumara. Intertwining close readings of the film's scenes and especially the film's soundscape with these philosophers’ insights, Crnković shows how listening in this film grounds personal ethics and political acts, and how it relates to the spheres of childhood, nature, and one's own inner voice ordaimon.