Cinematic Tourism: absurd stories about absurd times

This is the first installment of an occassional series in which we will survey the film landscape of particular nations around the world.  Today, Ivana Cvarkovic writes about growing up during the 1990's in the region formerly known as Yugoslavia and the most interesting films that managed to sprout from such a clusterfucked situation. 

Dear reader, if there's a particular country whose film tradition you are dying to inform the world about, then write to us at mailbag@stilldependentfilms.com and we will arrange for your article to be published.

Take it away, Ivana...

Growing up in a chaotic country, I was frequently compelled to question our collective sanity. Yet, going to see one of our “domestic films” would inevitably prompt me to wonder with ever greater concern: “Are we really this crazy?” Whether our films simply reflected or helped create the narrative of a ‘hot-blooded Balkan nature’ is still up for debate, but one thing is for sure—they will be remembered as important contributions to absurdist film and black comedy.

Right off the bat, it’s very difficult to talk about any “national” cinema of the 90s on the territory of former Yugoslavia. Movies were being made as the country shredded to pieces, but it doesn’t ring true to call them Yugoslavian movies. Bosnian or Serbian or Croatian is not quite right either. Perhaps more than in any other cultural realm, filmmakers and actors from the ex-Yu territories collaborated with each other across ethnicities, religions, dialects, etc. It makes sense to talk about Yugoslavian cinema prior to, say, 1989. Yet, as we get closer to the present, assigning any director, project, or actor to a particular “nation” becomes tricky and can be easily offensive. The case and point is the most recognized director from this part of the world: Emir Kusturica.

Kusturica grew up in Sarajevo, in a secular Bosnian Muslim family. Yes, secular Muslim. At some point he started to identify as a Serbian. So what does that mean? Well, that means that he is a major marker for people in the Yugosphere (tell me what you think about Kusturica and I’ll tell you who you are). Although his political views have morphed into something bizarre and worrisome, the value of Kusturica’s early art shouldn’t be judged by how he evolved years after he created it. Kusturica’s first major achievement was a coming of age movie that could care less about ethnic labels and national identity. A story about a teenager who falls in love with a prostitute, Do you Remember Dolly Bell? is among the most innocent, enchanting, and hilarious films you’ll ever see (Netflix has it!). This movie might be as far away from Hollywood as is humanly possible to get. No one wins anything against all odds; no one has to overcome their imperfections; no one has to prove anything to the world. The main character simply experiences the pain and beauty of being in love for the first time. At the end, he joyously and imperfectly sings Adriano Celentano’s “24 Mila Baci.” This is the work of a talented young director who hasn’t gotten lost in the craziness of his surroundings yet.

Kusturica then goes on to win a Palm D’Or with his second feature film, When Father Was Away on Business and make a string of excellent movies including two revolving around Romani culture, Time of the Gypsies and Black Cat, White Cat. With these pictures, Kusturica establishes his etno genre along with exploring political themes in Father. The next film that wins him his second Palm d’Or also places him on a track of controversy from which he is never to return. That’s the film Underground. This movie is extremely broad thematically, but it mostly attempts to illuminate the causes of Yugoslavia’s tragic ending. Kusturica looks for answers in the communist propaganda that, among other things, left a few deep wounds from the Second World War untreated. One of the main intentions of this ambitious project is to uncover the ways in which misrepresentation (insincere ideology) generated by the communists resulted in utter confusion among the masses who ended up turning on each other. Some people saw this narrative as one that provides excuses for the war crimes committed in Bosnia. Some went so far as to label it “Serbian propaganda.” The uproar that ensued placed Kusturica in the middle of a public stoning led by the French intellectual elite. The entire episode might have ruined Kusturica as an artist, but it speaks to just how much we rely on art to make sense out of our experiences and how much cinema contributes to the creation of “history.”

Beyond controversy, Underground undoubtedly has plenty of pure artistic value and that brings me to the absurdist tradition in Yugoslavian cinema. Underground is full of glass-smashing-crazy-dancing brass-band-running-soul-shaking kinds of scenes. The characters in this movie are obnoxious, amoral, obsessively passionate, ruthless, and obscenely joyous. These exaggerated characters manage not to become caricatures solely because they make the viewer feel deeply uncomfortable. Caricatures are something laughable and unrealistic, and while these attributes fit the main characters of Underground, it is also true that Kusturica’s characters possess a rawness of emotion that induces a deep sense of discomfort (perhaps even more so for American audiences). The social critique is so effortlessly achieved because the viewer is made to feel ashamed upon witnessing his own worst reflection in the mirror. Kustirica’s absurdism makes us all feel naked in front of each other and he makes us all feel responsible for each other’s ugliness.

It is predictable enough that the best absurdist drama should get created during the most absurd of times. If you’d like me to sum up the 90s in Serbia for you, let’s just say that schoolchildren at the time could run up to buy some gum at a kiosk, and among newspapers, bandages, and biscuits, they could easily run across a picture of a woman with her private parts gaping open. And that’s a milder example. As you can imagine, it is difficult to make cinema with shock value in such a context without being a little distasteful.

Nonetheless, a few solid films did emerge from that era. They captured the absurd and even managed to exaggerate it for better clarity. One such film is Goran Paskaljevic’s Cabaret Balkan. The film was based on a play that started playing in Yugospherian theaters in 1995, right as the bloody war in Bosnia was coming to a conclusion. It is important to underline at this point that cinema in this region fostered close ties to a flourishing theater scene. (Theater is pretty much the only cultural asset Belgrade can claim.) It is therefore not surprising that films drew their inspiration from the stage, especially in the form of actors who had mastered slapstick and “loud” performance style. Cabaret Balkan (literal translation is The Powder Keg) was a series of vignettes representative of a society in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Best friends fucking each other’s wives; violence for violence’s sake. The gruesomeness of the acts, however, does not repulse you to the same extent as the fiendishly immoral decisions of the characters that are just barely realistic, but for those of us who lived through the times, believable enough.

Finally, another noteworthy director from this period is Srdjan Dragojevic. The highlights of his career include Pretty Village, Pretty Flame and Wounds. The former received some international attention perhaps because it’s more palatable for Western audiences and deals with slightly more familiar topics. Again in this case, the medium seems to befit the topic—the madness of war can only be related to the viewer through the insanity of the screenplay. Similarly, Wounds explores the lives of two adolescents as they mature at a time of thoroughly fucked up moral standards.

Is absurdism the only appropriate way to comment on the absurd? Perhaps. However, the more important question seems to be: can absurdist art enhance our ability to perceive the absurd? The value of the films I discussed isn’t that they faithfully portray an era of madness. Their value lies in bringing out into the open the hidden creases and crevices of a society that lost its ability to perceive just how terrifying and ridiculous it has become. Sometimes, I guess, to show someone how loud and obnoxious they are, it’s not enough to put up a mirror in front of them. You need to get into their face and start being twice as loud and twice as obnoxious.