"Honeyland" has such a strong dramatic narrative that you wouldn't necessarily know it was a documentary rather than a scripted fictional film.
It tells the story of a woman eking out an existence in the mountains of North Macedonia while caring for her ailing mother. Her life is extremely hard and void of any of the conveniences most of us take for granted -- you know, such minor things like electricity and plumbing -- but she's developed a rhythm that works for her, one that relies very much on a symbiotic relationship with the natural world. She raises bees, and takes the honey she harvests from them into the nearest city to sell at marketplaces. Then enter this absolutely horrid neighbor family who come bumbling into her neighborhood and makes a mess of everything. They're after a quick buck without knowing how to do anything the right way, so they kill all of her bees, nearly ruin the bees' natural habitat, lose a whole bunch of their cows to a disease, all while shouting and bickering and making jackasses of themselves in front of a film crew.
The dynamic between these neighbors captures the dynamic of the world in microcosm. There are those who understand that humans and nature can co-exist, indeed must co-exist if humans are to survive, and those who just want to shortsightedly rape the earth for what they can get from it right now. It's a quietly devastating documentary.
"Honeyland" is the only film in Oscar history to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature.
EDIT: At the time I wrote the above statement it was true. But since then "Collective" has gone on to do the same.
Grade: A.
It tells the story of a woman eking out an existence in the mountains of North Macedonia while caring for her ailing mother. Her life is extremely hard and void of any of the conveniences most of us take for granted -- you know, such minor things like electricity and plumbing -- but she's developed a rhythm that works for her, one that relies very much on a symbiotic relationship with the natural world. She raises bees, and takes the honey she harvests from them into the nearest city to sell at marketplaces. Then enter this absolutely horrid neighbor family who come bumbling into her neighborhood and makes a mess of everything. They're after a quick buck without knowing how to do anything the right way, so they kill all of her bees, nearly ruin the bees' natural habitat, lose a whole bunch of their cows to a disease, all while shouting and bickering and making jackasses of themselves in front of a film crew.
The dynamic between these neighbors captures the dynamic of the world in microcosm. There are those who understand that humans and nature can co-exist, indeed must co-exist if humans are to survive, and those who just want to shortsightedly rape the earth for what they can get from it right now. It's a quietly devastating documentary.
"Honeyland" is the only film in Oscar history to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature.
EDIT: At the time I wrote the above statement it was true. But since then "Collective" has gone on to do the same.
Grade: A.