The movie has it all, amassing storyline with lots of great metaphors (even the title is a metaphor for forthcoming turmoil), great acting, beautiful music and colorful picture. The main storyline happens in Macedonia, but the movie is timeless and it is true for every conflict in the world, as in the movie the director in a beautiful way plays with time and places. Take any conflict in the world and you will see the same, how the violence can bring more hatred, turmoil and nothing good, and how hard can be to break this circle. But as it says in the movie the circle is not always round, it is not everything as it seems, and this circle of violence can be hardly broken. Truly a Masterpiece, and it won't be exaggerated if I say this is a movie version of Picasso's Guernica. The shapes are not easy to see, but when you see it you will understand it is stunning and it carries beautiful message.

I liked the movie quite a lot. Well done, with clear story line and conveying the ideas perfectly. I gave it 7 instead of 10 stars because of some incorrect historic statements. For example, one of the characters says that the Byzantines poked the eyes of 14000 "Macedonian" soldiers. This refers to the battle at Klyuch in 1014 where the Byzantine emperor Basil II won the battle and because of what he did to the soldiers he was called Basil the Bulgar-slayer (Boulgaroktonos Greek: Βουλγαροκτόνος) - obviously no mention of any Macedonian soldiers. Oh, well, what can one do - that's the present day Macedonian view on history. I just thought that a movie of this scale should be correct in every aspect - both what concerns present day events and facts from the past.

Obviously most people are enthralled with this movie. I wasn't. The music was good but the cinematography was lacking - too many shots shown over again. I watch a lot of foreign movies and, I guess, unfortunately had just watched "A Very Long Engagement" with cinematography that excelled. I suppose the message in Before The Rain was that time may not have been circular but it certainly comes back onto itself. The feeling I had was that the writer wanted to paint this little universe, which always repeated itself. Was this plot anything to do with the reality we all live in? No! We live in a linear reality and we don't see pictures of things that haven't happened yet. I thought it was more than depressing that the cycle the writer chose was punctuated with fusillades of gunfire from start to end. I thought "Dark Country" made better use of an enclosed circular universe.I also found the likelihood that someone could return to his old home after 16 years false, especially with the tribality and backwardness of the inhabitants which he had outgrown shortly after leaving. I have been traveling for 7 years and things are different. I could not go back to what was and be a part of those I knew. So the idea that Rade, world-wise traveler thought he could just enter his old stomping grounds did not make sense. He would have had more sense, particularly when he was met by a gun-toting guard. When he first arrived he saw his house had been abandoned so how could he not understand his old life had also been abandoned?

I cannot praise this film highly enough. It is one of my all time favorites.This is an exquisite, haunting film that does not get shown enough. The three interlocking parts of the story slant time and recast different characters in parallel tales that form a wreath, not a sequence or circle. Each story follows a similar arc and includes similar elements: a hidden impregnation; an agonizing choice that reaches out to one that has already passed out of reach; an unexpected victim of violence; and the tragic back story of attack and retribution that dates back at least a thousand years to a late Byzantine reprisal. The elements map to the Christ story as if it had been compressed in a black hole, the virgin birth and sacrificial death compacted together and exploding out of a dazzling collage of violently mindless brutality and mindful attention--to prayer, to craft, to shepherdry. Where is the viewer? A tragedy that is so alive in current events calls to action. If we are mute witnesses, then the story will reach a point where we must testify to the tragedy(so the photographer's stills tell us). But what words could have stopped what happened? If we stand by and are glad that the story is not ours we may yet find ourselves in the story. It doesn't matter if the face is Balkan or Palestinian--ejecting the combatants fails as policy. In the end and ending, reentering the picture as participant, not witness, repossessing the ruins of home and taking responsibility for the fruit of love, means giving up personal immortality (the European illusion of celebrity) in exchange for a blood-soaked collective eternity.