Honeyland (2019)

I can't help but feel often western audiences enjoy films like Honeyland for the voyeuristic pleasure. We get a look into lives that are so different from our own, so different we can't understand them. So we watch, transfixed, making our own assumptions about what we are seeing.

There is an interesting dichotomy in the use of the "fly on the wall" technique. On the one hand it is necessary to a degree. We have to just sit back and watch without injecting our own narrative into the lives of a woman like Muratova. But we also, in that sitting back, still manage to put our own assumptions into the narrative. Without context or comment, we are free to insert our own, often misguided assumptions. It's a catch 22.

I understand Honeyland came about accidentally. The film makers were looking to make a documentary about the region and came across Muratova and realized they wanted to film her and her life. They kept back and just observed. Certainly by viewing we still effect what we are viewing, but their approach attempts to minimize this so that they, and therefore we, can just pay witness to a life that is so removed from ours. There were times I was incredibly moved by what I was seeing, and finding connections with the humanity on display. But then I needed to ask myself if I was reading into something that I wasn't understanding. Still I was able to stand witness to something and maybe that is what will trigger something for me.

And maybe that witness is rich enough as it is. Maybe Muratova's experience of the making of Honeyland isn't connected to my experience of watching it, anymore than my witnessing something on the streets of my city lets me understand the people I see. This essential problem in this style of film making fascinates me and I'm not sure what the answer is or the solution. But Honeyland made me reflect on it.

Honeyland
Starring: Hatidže Muratova
Directors: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov