Beyond her tenacious and intimate reporting, director and cinematographer Polak has made a work of powerful images — heart-rending, elegiac, charged with hope.
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Village VoicePete Vonder Haar
Village VoicePete Vonder Haar
Perhaps even more disturbing than the Dickensian in extremis ordeal of Svalka life — including her rational yet heartbreaking decision to give up her baby rather than raise it in the dump — is Yula's straightforward acceptance of her situation.
Approach Something Better to Come with the same patience that the filmmaker exhibited in shooting it and you’ll be rewarded. That is, if your definition of “rewarded” includes being dismayed by the bleakness that exists on the edges of prosperity.
A bit of community spirit and camaraderie, it seems, can go a very long way, and sequences of spectacularly dystopian-apocalyptic, third-world bleakness are leavened by moments of incongruous beauty, even grace.