‘You Won‘t Be Alone’ with Rapace is such an oddity
In “You Won’t Be Alone,” there is a legend in 19th-century Macedonia — and Goran Stolevski’s film leans in hard on both the 19th-century and the Macedonia bits — about an old witchlike woman called either the “Wolf-Eatress” or Old Maid Maria, depending on who’s telling the story.
Or if they’ve just seen her.
The film is a horror movie, in that it has plenty of gory bloodshed and features a horrific-looking witch who craves the blood of babies, and is in general pretty angry. Being burned at the stake will have that effect. But I’m confident in saying it is unlike any other horror movie you’ve ever seen.
Although that makes sense, because it’s not really like any other movie, period. Impressionistic, unconventional and often downright weird, it’s most of all an exploration of humanity — what that means and how it is achieved.
The film begins with Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), completely covered in scars and looking not unlike
Freddy Krueger, showing up in the hut of a woman and her newborn daughter. She wants that baby.
Terrified and desperate, the mother asks Old Maria that she be able to keep the girl till she’s 16.
The mother spirits the baby away to a cave, where she keeps her imprisoned throughout her childhood, but away from Old Maid Maria.
Or so she thinks.
Old Maid Maria is also a shape-shifter, it turns out. Or maybe there is some other word for it — she can inhabit host bodies, including those of animals, but it destroys them (in stomach-churning fashion). She shows up in the cave and turns the now-teenage girl (Sara Klimoska) into a witch. (You can tell by the conical-shape black claw-like fingernails.)
The influence of Terrence Malick is felt strongly throughout the film
The girl doesn’t know how to be human, though. We hear her thoughts and her strange way of speaking as she wanders through beautiful fields — the in
fluence of Terrence Malick is great throughout the film, including in the pacing.
In a village, she slowly learns how to live, how to survive — not easy in this case because of an abusive husband. The villagers think she is mentally challenged in some way, most likely having to do with her husband’s beatings. In reality, she is just learning and trying to fit in.
But this is only the first step along her journey. Eventually, she inhabits other bodies, including one woman played by Noomi Rapace, the closest thing to a big name in the movie. We see through her eyes the struggles women face in this society, and the ways they find even small measures of happiness.
She will cycle through other bodies for different reasons; the version played by Alice Englert seems closest to what you might think of as contentment.
The brutal nature of life in the village isn’t the only impediment to happiness, however. There is always, whether seen or not, Old Maid Maria, lurking out there somewhere. At times she shows up, never welcome. Her presence means misery.
She is a witch, after all. She is jealous,
seeing what the girl has grown into (though not “grown” in the traditional sense, certainly). But there is also a large measure of confusion mixed in, as well. Why couldn’t she follow this path? Why must she roam the fields, an object of fear and derision?
As difficult as the girl’s life is, at least it represents a way forward, though how
far one wonders. Old Maid Maria is stuck — no wonder she is angry. “You Won’t Be Alone,” the title tells us. But it doesn’t seem to apply to her.