The Dark Side of the Sun (1997)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

Bozidar 'Bota' Nikolic

Writers:

Andrew Horton (writer)
Nikola Jovanovic (story)

Release Date:

20 December 1997 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

They needed a miracle for their love to survive

Plot:

Traveling in search of a cure for a rare skin disease, a man finds freedom and love along the way. |

Plot Keywords:

Coming Of Age | Fatal Disease | Father Son Relationship | Leather | Motorcycle

Cast

Guy Boyd	...	Father
Brad Pitt	...	Rick
Cheryl Pollak	...	Frances
Constantin Nitchoff
Milena Dravic	...	Mother
Gorica Popovic	...	Nina
Sonja Savic
Nikola Jovanovic
Boro Begovic
Milan Sretenovic		(as Milan Sretenovic-Globus)
Andjelo Arandjelovic		(as Angelo Arangelovic)
Sreten Mitrovic
Stole Arandjelovic	...	Vidar (the healer) (as Stole Arangelovic)
Ras Rastoder
Vladan Banovic

MPAA:

Rated R for some language and nudity.

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

USA | Canada | Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Iceland:L | Netherlands:12 | Germany:6 | USA:R | Spain:13 | UK:12

Filming Locations:

Montenegro

Company:

Avala Film

Trivia:

The film was shot in pre-war Yugoslavia during the summer of 1988. As editing neared completion civil war tore apart the region and much of the footage was lost. In 1996, after a five-year search, all of the lost footage was found and returned to producer Andjelo Arandjelovic, who worked on getting a distribution deal for the film, before it ended up getting released direct-to-video.

Soundtrack:

Air on a G String

A movie where 80% of the cast has names that end in 'VIC'!

Filmed in and around Yugoslavia, Dark Side of the Sun is quite a nice little film. Brad Pitt plays Rick, a young man born with a serious skin condition which forces him to shield himself from any sort of lighting. He lives in the dark and travels in the daytime in a 'Blackout New' kind of leather face mask. At home, he can only remove the protection so long as he remains in absolute darkness. Rick is tired of this, and humors his father who travels with him around the world in search of medical specialists that may be able to provide his son a cure. But Rick soon decides that enough is enough, and decides that he doesn't care about the consequences, if in fact the potential extent of damage done by his exposure to the sun is even a reality, given how rare his disease is. He gets rid of the mask and get's to experience so many things in a different way, even interacting with people he may not have before. Rick experiences a rejuvination.

In doing so, he meets a young American actress who was staying with a group that was performing in the town square festivities. And he falls in love with her. But she adores Rick as a friend, while she is keen on the 'dark masked rider' she happened to meet at a party one evening. And that is who she is in love with, not knowing that Rick is the same person. Rick plays something of a double life, like Cyrano de Bergnac style, but as one person. Rick doesn't tellt he girl that he and the masked rider are the same person. He just seems to enjoy her company and, I suppose, doesn't want her to feel pity for him and ruin everything if she were to know that his exposure to the sun would mean imminent death. He doesn't want to spoil how great he feels about everything.

Dark Side of the Sun turned out to be a very good movie, though it is a sad story. There is some minor flaws in the film. As one viewer previously mentioned, if they were to get rid of the leather suit to "live again", they wouldn't put it on just to play a double life to charm a girl. I would definitely agree. He didn't seem to detest the suit much so long as he could be with the girl. But I would think that his convictions for "living again" would be so strong (as they are throughout the movie) that he wouldn't even want to lie to the girl. But like I said, it was probably also a matter of his not wanting her to consistingly look upon him with guilt or pity.

Also, for a young man who spent so much time in a full leather mask, I would expect that he would not only be pale and thin, but probably have very thin hair or little hair at all.

It is very uncharacteristic of Brad Pitt films nowadays, but in this, as young Rick, he's a natural about it. Everyone else is good, too. And the setting, what little you get to see of Yugoslavia, is gorgeous. It seemed like it would have been better, however, had it been a foreign picture, and you even get this impression from the beginning with the folk music introduction and relatively old looking titles. But, it's definitely worth seeing.