Exquisitely and beautifully brutal via a very contrived plot.

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2011)

This movie is beautiful to view, but emotionally brutal in the end via its heavily contrived plot. There is a cinematic treasure here, to be invited innocently, first-hand, to view the ravages of a civil and religious war on an otherwise normal society - all played out within its stunning rugged countryside. We are walked through scene after scene with our central character guide to view the realities of war - how people suffer and learn to hate. This does not exclude the central character; even she responds to terrorism with a focused retaliative vengeance.
But this is only the upper level of the story - the second level down is far, far darker: it is the Oedipus Legend on steroids. The analogy could be made that the central character, by turning to violent revenge as a way to compensate her loss, is instead herself revisited horrifically by her own decided actions. As a shadow horror, her offspring parallels and even exceeds this downward spiral track of malice.
That what happens in this movie _could ever happen_ is truly a dramatic stretch, exceeding even the Greek myth makers. Therein, I had to balk.
Furthermore - the loving - even transcendental deathbed reconciliation enounced by the main character, "To be together is everything..." seems, no matter how many times I try it out in my normally wildly idealistic mind, too idiotically simple to cover what travesties have befallen in this tale. Can we swallow a forgiveness more Christlike than Christ?