A modern western that interestingly takes us between Turkey in the early 1900's, to modern day New York, New York. DUST brings a well rounded story with unique characters and beautiful scenery to the table, while maintaining a flow between smooth contentedness and shocking chaos. The structure of the narrative is built to keep our attention, creating suspense and leading us to want answers. Problems still exist. One is the overuse of story to reality dualism that completely undermines the reality that the film worked so hard to construct. Violent realism is a shock, showing us the sadistic personalities of this film world in the East. We see many relationships between characters that are very questionable, but still understandable. We are left to ponder (and roll our eyes) upon the happy ending within the sad, yet realistic world. Everything is tied up in the end, but something else interesting occurs. The entire narration of the film is undermined. We are left to question our trust in the truth of the narrator's words. Did this story, which gave these oddly connected characters reasons for being together actually happen the way we were told, did it happen at all? This little twist is the main weapon in the movies arsenal, curving at least one side of an analytical movie-goer's lip towards a smile. It is intelligent and creative in aspects and yet uses stereotypical Hollywood-like conventions that weaken it's good attributes. It ain't bad, but it also ain't the best film I've ever seen. I do believe it to be a much better film than Manchevski's first film, Before the Rain. He is growing.
Review of Dust
