funeral is a wonderful shot of a man holding a gun and a torn flag. The reason for showing the guns and the torn flags is to suggest blood shed. Several times the Orthodox Cross is framed in a shot by itself. The cross keeps an unerlying tone of religion throughout the whole movie. One may think the movie is about religion, but it is not it is about "500 years of our blood". Which is to say, it is about the past. Manchevski masters the use of foreshadowing in Before The Rain. Anne tells Aleksander "Look at your face" which is a foreshadowing the events about to unfold at the restaurant where her husband, Nick is killed. Ironically, he is shot in his face and she kneels to him and says to him, "Look at your face!"Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain is a complex trilogy with many aspects to be reviewed. With more than one viewing the use of mise-en-scene, the shot and foreshadowing become apparently clear to the viewer. Milcho Manchevski summarizes the movie best with this quote, " Before the Rain, refers to the feeling of heavy exception, when the skies are pregnant with possibility of an outburst, when people are waiting for a tragedy of cleansing."(1)...
