The Forgiveness of Blood

I can believe these sorts of things still occur in the world.  Remote villages, still tied to Old World dogma, still victimized by earlier centuries' rituals and rules.  Customs born perhaps out of the Old Testament, and maybe at odds with the New.   In the mountainous northern reaches of Albania,  the laws known as the Kanun are still followed, according to 2011's THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD.  This despite the (invasion?) of progress not only with Internet access but also a mere paved roadway.

There is tension between two families.  This is established in a restaurant early in the film as the men taunt each other from different tables.  Soon, words fly between Mark (Refet Abazi), who makes a living delivering bread in a horse drawn carriage and Sokol, whose family owns the land needed for passage. Sokol resents that Mark's ancestors once owned this land and for no other apparent motive than spite, blocks the passage with rocks and a fence.  The words later turn to violence, and Sokol is dead.  Mark flees, and the family is left homebound.  A "blood feud" has begun.  The Kanun states that the male members of the family that murdered must remain in their house or will become "blood for blood".

The family includes four children.  Much of the focus of director Joshua Marston's film is on Nik (Tristan Halilaj), a high school senior who is now trapped.  Watching his promising young life evaporate.  Collapse under the rules of long dead men who perhaps had no hope or prospects themselves.  Nothing like senseless suffering to keep blood relatives together.   We see the elders sit around and assess the situation, bound to traditions and helpless/unwilling to upend them.  Similiar to the Mafia? The children pay for the sins of their fathers, past and present.  Is Mark selfish in his flight? A father is supposed to sacrifice for his children, not the other way around.

A discussion late in the movie addresses those ideas.  What was behind Mark and his brother's decision to put the man down? We don't see the killing, described as self defense.  The paternal unit cries that his actions were for the well being of his family.  But the men remain stifled and trapped.  The Kanun states that the women can go out an make a living.  More sacrifice - daughter Rudina (Sindi Lacej) will also quit school and have to take up the bread route.  Even sell cigarettes.

Tough questions abound and, despite the quiet approach Marston takes with the leisurely paced THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, a hard examination of culture and ritual, certainly at odds with the prospects of motor vehicles and cell phones.  Proud men who would feel that strict adherence is proper.  To whom? There is no mention of God here.  That might've made this story even more dramatically rich.