Product Description: Twelve-year-old first-time actor Marko Kovacevic delivers a riveting performance in this wrenching drama about the pain and pitfalls of false hope. Marko who is from an abusive family is also the victim of his bullying schoolmates. He manages to find refuge in a beached train car and in his poetry. One of his teachers encourages his literary endeavors but when the teacher falls prey to the same childish cruelties that torment Marko the boy solicits the help of a violent mercenary instead.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN Rating: NR UPC: 667443559146 Manufacturer No: WOL4290D
A learning experience for all Great movie, that shows the other side of the coin. This behavior is world wide ! Some of it reminds me of my childhood.
Consider the history Ten very nice reviews have already been posted as I write and they give you a good idea of what you will see in this powerful film. What can I add? Historical comments.
The film starts out by setting up an historical context for itself. The hated and corrupt communists have fallen. But what is left? Then we are shown the film maker's perspective on what is left. A sort of hopeless semi-anarchy and plenty of corruption. Life is messed up and short in Macedonia. Rather hopeless and no way out. Very nice photography indeed helps keep the dismal town very interesting visually, however messed up everything is.
This film could serve to remind us that the west did very little to help hold post-communist society together after having worked for decades to defeat the Red Menace. American soldiers flit through a couple of times for reasons that are unclear, but that would be irrelevant because they do not have any impact on the day to day state of life. If they are tokens of the promise of help, it is an empty promise.
The theory in Washington was that investors would move in and establish a free-market bonanza using cheap relatively well educated labor. So no ambitious government plan to follow through with the defeat was deemed necessary. No sort of Marshall Plan for example. Again, empty promises.
Then the world largely turned its attention away from those millions of people and left them to fend for themselves and deal with their poverty, crowding, ethic grudges, disfunctional families and so on.
This film in a way says "your attention may be on the anorexic problems of the latest drugged out starlet, but hey! we are over here with even bigger problems. Do you want to know or would you rather not?"
The allies almost left Germany in a shambles after its defeat in WWII. Film buffs may remember Rossellini's Germany Year Zero. That film also focuses on desperate kids trying to get by in a different sort of post-war rubble. It ends by bluntly asking, do we want to leave things this way? Well we did not in that case. Anyway, I think this film in a political/historical sense might be compared to Year Zero.
If one assumes that the title Mirage has a message in it, that message could possibly be that Americans for example look across the Atlantic and see just the good stuff here and there that suggest (extremely limited) success of western investments. But these highly selected examples create at best largely an illusion of freedom and liberation. In fact the closer you get the more it looks like a desert where no lush fields are springing up.
Then we have mirages at the more personal level. The school and teacher, like the western powers in the cold war, raise hopeless expectations of personal possibilities and national possibilities -- but they are watching out for themselves. The boy is betrayed by mirages and false promises. He dreams faithfully, but only to have his dreams crushed.
Mirage presents strong, compelling, and compassionate images to help us remember "the forgotten ones." That is art with muscle.
"Be The Bullet..., A Poem For The Fatherland" Note: Macedonian with English subtitles.
Synopsis: Marko is a sensitive and intelligent young adolescent whose exemplary grades and writing talent goes unnoticed by his dysfunctional, abusive family. His talents unfortunately do not go unnoticed by the school bullies who taunt poor Marko, beating him up on almost a daily basis. Looking for a way out in hopes to find a better life he is encouraged by his teacher to enter a poetry contest, the winner getting a free trip to Paris to compete internationally. When an already abusive lifestyle escalates for the worse the aspiring poet is swept up in a maelstrom that demands more than a talent for composition.
Critique: Released in '04 director Svetozar Ristovski's `Mirage' is a sad commentary on the hopelessness and violence in Macedonia. Unfortunate but too often true, intelligence and depth is no match for rampant and widespread brutality and ignorance. To survive one must become that which he hates most.
Positives: Marko Kovacevic is superb as the shy and abused Marko. Possessing a face too attractive and expressive to belong to a boy, he bears a striking resemblance to the late American actor River Phoenix.
Worth watching, but be forewarned, this isn't `The Sound of Music'. My Rating: -4 Stars-.
Mirage Ritovski's devastating study of a downtrodden youth in contemporary Macedonia offers no comfort for those seeking tidy endings and late-arriving omens of joy. Still, "Mirage" is powerful and riveting on its own terms, bitterly reflecting the realities of life for thousands in a war-torn, impoverished place, as the films of Rossellini and De Sica did half a century ago. Kovacevic's transformation from a sullen, helpless, sensitive boy into a veritable one-teen island of rage and reprisal is terrifying and authentic. This "Mirage" will definitely leave a lasting impression.
Killing of a childs mind This movie for me was all about the killing of an innocent mind, Young Marko a boy who just needs to have a guide in life is let down by the self important adults in his life.
Marko has a talent that could have been used for the betterment of him, instead all he learns is that if you life in a sewer then you better act the part.
His teacher only seems to be concerned in what Marko can do for him and little of what he can do for Marko. This is also markedly obvious in how the authority figures that surround Marko have been trained to act like rats in the sewer.
Marko Kovacevic gives the performance of his short life.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
