The best allegories are those that are clear first as narratives, with the allegorical part slightly underneath. This is true of Honeyland, as an older woman (Hatidze Muratova) lives with her dying mother alone in the beautiful mountains of Macedonia. She makes her living harvesting honey from wild bees and sells it in Skopje, twelve miles away. At some point during the three years that this film was made a Turkish family arrives and lives in their trailer near Hatidze and quickly realize that she is making money from the honey of the wild bees. They start beekeeping themselves and don't listen to Hatidze's advice to take only half the honey and leave half and the bees start to die. The Turkish family abuses their children and their cattle, who start dying, and after taking and selling as much honey as they can they leave and Hatidze has to start all over again with what bees remain.
This is an effective documentary somewhat in the style of Frederick Wiseman, i.e., no narration or titled identification. It reminds one of two low-key fiction films about attempts to make money with natural resources while renewing them and keeping them alive, which Hatidze does instinctively: Victor Nunez's Ulle's Gold, with Peter Fonda (1997) and Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) about Italian peasants. Hatidze manages to keep going, chopping firewood for the winter and listening to music on a radio for which she has built a jerry-rigged aerial. This is a somewhat slow-moving documentary which pays off one's patience with beautiful detail.
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