'Honeyland' Is A Haunting Portrait Of A Dying Way Of Life [Sundance Review]

There is an unassuming languidness to Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s anthropologic documentary about a rural Macedonian beekeeper, “Honeyland.” It’s a quiet and passive film that’s content to luxuriate in place and revel in solitude, which, in turn, both drags the narrative’s loose pacing and instills a certain natural structure that, once embraced, becomes almost mesmerizing.

“Honeyland,” as it begins, is a sort of documentation of a disappearing way of life. Hatidze Muratova, a 50-something woman, is, along with her ill mother Nazife, the last true resident of their rural village. Hatidze spends her time caring for her bees — which she keeps in the stone walls of old structures and in the rocks of cliffs instead of modern bee boxes — and for her mother. Her approach to beekeeping is deeply spiritual and environmentally conscious. This consciousness, though, is not the progressive sort. Instead, it feels rooted in deep tradition and respect for both the bees and the natural world itself. Though she sells her honey in markets in Skopje, Macedonia’s capital city, she refuses to collect more than half of her bees’ honey at a time. Some for us, some for them, she says, time and again.

This version of “Honeyland,” would have been good enough on its own. But Stefanov and Kotevska, who filmed Hatidze for three years, happened upon a pivotal conflict that would alter Hatidze’s life: the arrival of a nomadic family of nine who settled nearby with a few hundred cattle and a fierce determination to make a living. Hatidze, as best she can, embraces the chaos and all the change that comes with it. When the cows meander into her yard, she gamely shoos them away. When the children flee from their stern and exacting father, Hussein, she is gentle and eager to show them her bees. And when Hussein decides that he too will raise bees, she teaches him the ropes — urging him to never take more than half the honey at a time.

Inevitably, Hussein and his tornadic family unleash mayhem upon Hatidze’s quiet life. But Stefanov and Kotevska know enough to humanize the family and their deep struggles before the true breadth of the destruction they bring along with them unfolds. In a different film, it would be easy to despise them and their way of life. This family, “Honeyland” makes exceedingly clear, is in dire straits. There are mouths to feed and not enough to go around. Paired with Hussein’s eagerness to dive headfirst into any money-making endeavor that he can, the situation becomes both heart-wrenching and unavoidable.

As one desperate choice after another by Hussein erodes Hatidze’s way of life, the metaphors at the heart of “Honeyland” become ever more clear. Hussein, of course, is the modern world. His hand is, in many ways, forced by necessity, but the consequences of his actions decimate the natural balance that Hatidze so embraced and relied upon. The dichotomy, which is writ large throughout the film, is nonetheless handled with care. Hussein may come off as a controlling and, at times, belligerent father, but the world he inhabits is one where there is no guarantee of a next meal for his family.

Still, it seems easy. Would it be so hard to embrace Hatidze’s way of life, to follow her sage advice? Would it be so hard to nurture the resources around that abound without bleeding them dry for a few extra bucks? Would it be so hard to step back and think about the destruction we wrought? The answers to these questions — the consequences of the actions of others — are the burdens that Hatidze, who so gracefully embodies everything that’s beautiful about “Honeyland,” carries on her shoulders. And this, first and foremost, an indictment of the way we live. [A]

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