Resistance
to the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević in 90’s Serbia was
stronger, at least in numbers, and more eventful than it seems from
the information provided by the media, Serbian and international.
Still, it was not powerful enough to prevent a madman from doing the
damage to the neighbouring countries,
national economy and his own people. People who took part in it, my
elementary / high school self included, tend to romanticize their
futile fight for freedom. It took ten years of fighting to kick him
out, ten years marked with the collapse of the former country, bloody
wars, destruction of cities like Sarajevo, Vukovar and Dubrovnik,
economy experiments, collapses and theft through multi-level banking
schemes and finally the change was pretty cosmetic – “The Butcher
of Balkans” went to The Hague to stand trial for his war crimes,
but the system and the “deep state” remained intact.
From
that time on, the name Srbijanka Turajlić has been very well
known in Belgrade and in Serbia. Even though rarely (if ever)
politically active as a member of a certain party, she was a
political figure coming from the university circles, organizing the
protests and attending them side by side with her students. And that
qualifies her as a good subject for a documentary about those
uncertain times.
However,
HBO-produced The Other Side of Everything,
the film which
premiered in Toronto and won big at IDFA, was made by the subject’s
own daughter Mila Turajlić, known for her previous effort
Cinema Komunisto. And here we are on a slippery ground from an
ethical point of view. Will a mother be completely sincere with her
own child? Could a daughter treat her mother with the same distant
objectivity / objective distance as it would be the case with some
other subject? What about the memories that are not that stable and
can be easily manipulated to fit the existing narrative? And finally,
what about the theme or themes, would a filmmaker closely related to
her subject be able to filter all the important moments from the
unimportant ones?
But
the film starts quite simply, with a text card explaining the always
locked door in the living-room of the Turajlić family apartment. Two
doors in the same room have been locked from the time of
nationalization in 1947 when the luxurious apartment belonging to
Srbijanka’s grandmother (a widow of a former government minister)
was divided in smaller units to accommodate some of Belgrade
proletariat. Seems a bit odd to start a documentary about a
distinctive political figure with such petty and petit-bourgeois
problem like nationalized apartment, but it is an efficient way to
point out that the Turajlić family was often on the wrong side of
historical tendencies thanks to their own personal ethics.
Srbijanka’s parents were social democrats and they were opposing
the communist regime, which was enough to mark them bourgeois and
label them as class enemies. Srbijanka and her husband were pacifists
in the war time and convinced democrats under the dictatorship. Mila
might find herself in a similar situation in near future.
Mila
Turajlić succeeds in intertwining the intimate, family history with
a national one, but the topics she juggles with are numerous which
makes film uneven. The topic anticipated as central, Srbijanka’s
account of the events of the 90’s and post-Milošević times, does
not bring anything new and unknown to the table for someone who
witnessed the same events, but might shed some new light for someone
less informed. The ending, with the very same door from the beginning
being finally open, seems a bit neat, and it closes the proverbial
circle, which seems to be its only purpose. With more than a decent
look, top-notch editing and evocative moments like contrast between
the turmoil on the streets of Belgrade city centre and the calm of
organized chaos of Turajlić home, The Other Side of Everything
is not an essential viewing, but it is not a waste of time either.
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