Belgian playwright and poet
Maurice Maeterlinck said, “At every crossroads
on the path that leads to the future, tradition
has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.” As
demonstrated in Joshua Marston’s second feature,
The Forgiveness of Blood, customs, traditions,
dogmas, and deeply embedded ways of thinking
that were once pertinent can become irrelevant
and even damaging with the passing of time. An
example is the Albanian Kanun law, an uncodified
collection of customs and rules perpetuated by
word of mouth since the fifteenth century.
Incongruously existing side by side with
high-definition TV, Facebook, cell phones, and
texting, these traditions are anathema to the
lives of many young Albanians.
As the film opens, an ancient horse-drawn cart
plods its way along a narrow road surrounded by
a broad expanse of open fields. On land
previously owned by his grandfather, the driver
Mark (Reft Abazi) and his teenage son Nik
(Tristan Halilaj), a senior in high school, use
the road to earn their living selling bread.
Resentful and jealous, Sokol (Vetan Osmani), the
current owner of the land, creates obstacles to
the father and son accompanied by growing
threats. The deep-seated antagonism rooted in
years of jealousy and animosity is revealed at
the local pub when insults are exchanged that
stop short of violence. When Sokol closes the
road, however, to Mark’s cart and threatens him
with a knife in the presence of his adolescent
daughter Rudina ((Sindi Lacej), Mark returns
with his brother (Luan Jaha) and Sokol is
stabbed to death in a murder that takes place
off-camera.
The brother is arrested and sent to jail for
eighteen years, while Mark, accused of
complicity in Sokol’s murder, goes into hiding.
One of the unwritten laws is the stricture that,
in the case of blood feuds or other crimes
between neighbors, an entire family must suffer
the consequences of the crime even if only one
member is guilty of the offense and that the
family of the deceased can extract retribution
by killing a male member of the guilty clan. The
blood feud and the application of the Kanun law
hits hardest on the two older children as well
as young Dren. Rudina, who has dreams of going
to university, is forced to leave school to take
over father’s business of delivering bread which
she expands to include other items.
Nik, however, whose ambition includes wanting to
open an Internet café, is chained to the
home possibly for a long period of time, afraid
to venture out for fear of retribution. The
Forgiveness of Blood is not only a story about a
conflict between past and present, but an
exploration of the inner lives of people in a
culture that we in the West are hardly even
aware of. As in Marston’s 2004 acclaimed Maria
Full of Grace, his latest film is filled with a
powerful authenticity racked with unnerving
tension that tells a potent story of unfulfilled
hopes and dreams. Immersing himself in the
culture, Marston interviewed families living in
isolation as mandated by the Kanun law, and
shows events as they unfold without judgment or
evaluation. With local first-time actors, Lacej
and Halilaj giving nuanced and convincing
performances, the result is a film of great
humanity.
