Alive! (2009)

That ending. That bloody ending. I genuinely sat there afterwards wondering if I'd accidentally skipped to a different film. Everything that came before it, for better or worse, exists in one world entirely, and then the final stretch arrives like it's wandered in from somewhere else completely. It's the kind of tonal whiplash that drags a film down a notch, maybe more, and that's exactly what happened here for me with Alive!, the Albanian drama I watched as part of my A-Z project, one film from every country in the world. Albania, you've made your mark, just not entirely in the way I'd hoped.

The bulk of the film centres on a blood feud between two families, the sort of ancient, inherited grudge that gets passed down like a family heirloom nobody actually wants. After his father dies, the main character Koli finds himself the unwilling recipient of that feud. It's not a bad premise at all. There's real dramatic weight in the idea of a man inheriting someone else's war, carrying a burden he never chose, and in the hands of a tighter script this could have been gripping stuff. The tradition they keep referring to, something called a Kunan if I'm catching it right, feels like it's rooted in genuine Albanian cultural practice, a kind of tribal code of honour and vengeance, and I found myself genuinely curious about it.

The trouble is the pacing. It is slow. Not the contemplative, atmospheric kind of slow where you feel the weight of the silence. More the kind where threads are picked up and then quietly abandoned, where you wait for certain characters or moments to matter and they simply don't. There's a looseness to the storytelling that keeps you at arm's length when you want to be pulled in closer. I kept waiting for it to tighten up, and it never quite did.

And then that ending arrives. I found out afterwards that the film is based on true events, which does give it more context, but even so, it feels bolted on. Like someone decided at the last minute to go in a completely different direction without laying any groundwork for it. The poster, to be fair, hints at where things end up, so maybe I should have seen it coming. But it still felt jarring, disconnected from the 90-odd percent of the film that preceded it. Without that ending I'd probably have settled on a comfortable three stars. It genuinely cost the film half a star on its own.

What saves this from being a disappointment I'd write off entirely is the glimpse it offers into rural Albanian life. The scenery is genuinely beautiful in places, sweeping and rugged and a world away from anything I see on most screens. There's something touching about the quieter domestic moments too, the texture of everyday life in a community still shaped by these ancient codes. It reminded me a little of the experience of watching Hive (2021), another film rooted in a specific, largely unseen culture, where the setting and social detail do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting even when the narrative isn't firing on all cylinders.

So where does that leave me? Two and a half stars feels about right. It's not a bad film. I want to be clear about that. It's made with some care, it carries genuine feeling in places, and it gave me a window into Albanian culture I simply wouldn't have had otherwise. That's exactly the point of this project, and in that sense it delivered. But I can't in good conscience recommend it to a mate looking for something to watch on a Friday night. The pacing will test your patience, the loose threads will frustrate you, and that ending will have you staring at the screen going "what was that, then?"

Country number two ticked off. Onwards.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2009  | Watched: 2025-05-20

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Albania: Hive (2021)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)