previously published on Cineuropa
The point of Mladen
Kovačević's latest documentary, 4 Years in 10 Minutes,
shown in the Documentary Competition of the 24th Sarajevo
Film Festival, is stated early on, in the first title card. “What I
expected at the beginning of the journey, what I was going through
and what I got at the end had nothing in common” might sound like a
sparkling gem of banality and pseudo-philosophy, but it is true,
sometimes painfully so, when it comes to climbing mountains – and
especially conquering Mount Everest, which is the case here.
The course of action is
predictable: it consists of an initial, casual curiosity, like in a
piece of ethnological cinema; the physical and mental hardships of
the ascent and descent; a bit of technical talk, just enough for
viewers to realise just how dangerous the challenge is; moments of
enlightenment, shock and fear; and eventually slowly returning to a
“normal” life. The title, spoken by protagonist Dragan
Jaćimović later on during the climactic moment on the
summit, filmed in a continuous sequence, sums it up correctly,
although we only see the final two months (from the end of March
until the end of May 2000) of it packed into the lean running time of
just over an hour. However, Kovačević's film feels quite unique not
just in its earnestness, but also thanks to his daring, borderline
experimental (but still clever) ideas and the top-notch work by his
crew, editor Jelena Maksimović and sound designer
Jakov Munižaba (both known for their work on Ognjen
Glavonjić's Depth Two and The Load).
There was not very much
material to work with – the small volume of Jaćimović's own
amateur DV-camera footage and some 200 handwritten pages of his
diary. Since the video material was not of a great quality, some
fine-tuning had to be applied, especially in terms of the sound (of
course, recorded simultaneously with the picture), which in the final
version became an important tool for creating the atmosphere, from
the rhythmic sound of bells at the beginning in a Nepalese village,
underling the calmness of the moment, to the howling wind at higher
altitudes enhancing the impression of the threatening situation that
our protagonist-cameraman has got himself into.
On the other hand, the
diary provided more to chose from for the often philosophical title
cards that Kovačević uses in abundance, although they never bore
the audience. He is playful with them, converting them into a means
of showing the relative nature of time, which merely reflects our
inner impressions: for the first two-thirds of the movie, they are
shown against freeze frames and on a small portion of the screen,
complete with the date, only to be later printed on a black screen
and, finally, just over the running footage.
But the film’s biggest
success is probably remaining faithful to the structure of the
original material, thereby providing an authentic picture of
climbing, regardless of the dramatic clichés. The tricky part of
that is the fact that it is as much of an inner battle as it is an
external challenge.
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