A Film a Week - Small Things / Male stvari

 previously published on Cineuropa

Although Zvonimir Jurić’s body of work is not particularly large for a career spanning more than 30 years, with only three feature-length films helmed solely by him and six more made in collaboration with other filmmakers, he is regarded as one of the finest and most respected Croatian auteurs. The reason for this might lie in the fact that he does not seek approval, but instead picks his projects carefully and sticks to a certain realist, naturalistic style when commenting on the reality of Croatia, whether addressing hooliganism (Sex, Drink and Bloodshed, 2004), war crimes from the 1990s (The Blacks), or the gloominess of village life during the transition period (The Reaper).

Now Jurić has a new film, Small Things, an adaptation of a short story by the Croatian film critic, journalist and prose writer Jurica Pavičić, that comments on the contemporary Croatian reality and the fading of the family ties due to hastened way of life, class stratification, money and personal troubles, as well as everyday hardships. The film has just premiered at Pula Film Festival.

The film takes place on a small island not far from the coastal town of Split, where three generations of an ordinary working-class family gather to finalise the deal regarding the sale of the land for a future investment project and the division of the money. The father (thespian Izudin Bajrović, in a quiet and folksy mood) is old and ailing, but, as a man of few words, he does not complain and instead tries to keep the family together. His daughter Irena (Ivana Roščić) is a recently separated sad-sack who has also brought her two children, Kate and Ivor (played by newcomers Bepina Baričeveić and Borna Mihovilović, respectively), who keep arguing and fighting. The other daughter, Anica (Marija Škaričić), also tries to carry out her father’s balancing act, but she is not ready to move on from a recent loss in her life. The son Ivan (played by actor and filmmaker Juraj Lerotić, behind the international success Safe Place) is depressed and, the family fears, potentially suicidal. The atmosphere is gloomy, and some unspoken things and resentments begin to surface over the course of a few grey winter days…

The script written by Jurić and Pavičić displays some dramaturgical excellence, both in the completely natural-sounding dialogue and in the timing of seemingly small but significant revelations, as well as much-needed moments of relief from the overwhelming gloominess. It also serves the actors perfectly, allowing them to deliver their lived-in, low-key bravura performances. The cast, consisting of Croatian A-listers, seizes this opportunity, whether in the lead roles or in the episodic parts, as is the case with Snježana Sinovčič Šiškov in the role of the neighbour.

Unlike some of his previous films, which were marked by dynamic camerawork, Jurić here opts almost exclusively for long, carefully framed static shots lensed by Marko Brdar that highlight the staleness of life, whether the reason for that staleness is old age, personal crisis, depression or simply the weather. The atmosphere is further emphasised by the absence of music, the sound design by Julij Zornik and Ognjen Popić, which is full of howling wind, and some dim lighting firmly glued to Ana Štulina’s precise editing. It all makes Small Things feel like a discreetly unpleasant, but quite necessary and highly emotional viewing experience.

A Film a Week - Guidance Through the Black Hole

originally published on Cineuropa

Life itself can be stranger than fiction and that is the reason why documentaries can be as interesting as fiction features, if they are done properly, that is. Sometimes it is a matter of topic; sometimes it’s all about the protagonist. A polished narrative and visual style don’t hurt either. Guidance Through the Black Hole [+], a film by Aleksandar Nikolić and Zlatko Pranjić world-premiering in Sarajevo Film Festival’s Documentary Competition, has it all: the protagonist, the plot twists and lots of style, heart and soul. Further festival exposure is expected, especially in the former Yugoslavian region.

The issue of “immigrant blues” might seem to be used and re-used in cinema, but in the case of the man nicknamed Sule, a Bosnian immigrant and one of the last true bohemians of London’s Portobello Road, it seems completely fresh. An interesting person, a poet, a painter, a serial procrastinator, a compulsive gambler and an alcoholic who is his own worst enemy. He never quite adjusted to life in London, the sole destroyer of his marriage, homeless for several years and with one single dream: to see his hometown of Banja Luka again. He will get his chance at redemption with an offer to exhibit his work in the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in London. His only task is to finish the four remaining paintings from the titular cycle.

In a genuine, no-nonsense style, Sule narrates his life achievements, slip-ups and his attitude and opinions on the mistakes that he has made: friendship, fatherhood, religion, art and personal development. He is what he is, he honestly wants to make things better and he gets so close. But can he really change? As a highly individual character, Sule makes his story both distinctive and universal. Guidance Through the Black Hole is not just a film about migration, integration, the lack of it and nostalgia. Neither it is just an exploration of creative processes and making art. It is about life as a whole. 

First-timer Zlatko Pranjić and the more experienced Aleksandar Nikolić - known for his work as a cinematographer, editor, writer and director on another well-known documentary The Serbian Lawyer - felt comfortable with their protagonist and knew what to do with the material he provided them. Filmed almost completely in black and white, the film underlines the moodiness of its main character and contrasts it. One sequence in vivid colour near the end shows the sweetness of success on the horizon. The sound design, consisting mainly of background noises cut with sharp beats accenting the tense scenes, is also interesting and so is the soundtrack, which varies from Serbian alternative rockers Goribor to melancholic Bosnian folk music (“sevdah”) standards.

A Film a Week - A Brief Excursion / Kratki izlet

From the description, A Brief Excursion, the first fiction feature by Croatian director Igor Bezinović whose career consists of several documentaries and shorts, seems like a small movie that will attract big labels like “existential”, “artistic”, “meditative” and so on. It follows the group of characters trying to reach an elusive medieval church and see its frescoes that transforms into a journey to a proverbial heart of darkness for each one of them. The film premiered in Rotterdam’s Bright Future selection and met some favorable reviews, so some more festival exposure is likely and it will hit the home turf in Pula and Motovun, but the hopes for some kind of regular distribution, especially abroad, might seem too optimistic.

Still, its modest budget, guerrilla-style shooting against the backdrop of a well-known party destination Motovun Film Festival and the cast of mostly non-professional actors playing the semi-fictionous versions of themselves (all of them are kinda-sorta recognizable faces from the nightlife scene of country’s capital Zagreb) might seem as a gimmick, but it is not, for the most of the time. It is also an adaptation of a well-known short novel by Antun Šoljan that is the part of Croatian high-school curriculum, already adapted by the same filmmaker into his short A Very Brief Excursion (2014), but not in the straight, expected way. It is more faithful to Šoljan’s spirit, style and themes it dwells on than to the chain of real and surreal events it is portraying.

Stola (Bezinović’s co-writer Ante Zlatko Stolica) is our guide and unreliable narrator that tells the story from his memories presumably some years after the events, so some details are not in the right place. Back then, he was an aimless 20-something, probably a student trying to figure out what to do with his life while partying with like-minded proto-hipster people over the course of one summer that might change everything. His almost legendary friend Roko (Mladen Vujčić) proposes the excursion to the monastery ruins near the place called Gradina (which can be anywhere and clearly symbolises the Utopia), and two of them spend the night convincing a group of people to join them.

But the excursion does not go as planned: the bus breaks down and the crew of seven people continue their trip on foot, not exactly sure where they are going. As they are going on and on, things around them are getting more and more peculiar and hikers one by one drop out of the crew for some strange reasons. Do the ruins and the frescoes really exist? Are the young people completely lost? Is it all a dream? Is it all about the journey and not the destination, as the cliché suggests?

Some parallels could be drawn to Andrea Arnold’s masterpiece American Honey, even though Bezinović’s film was shot before Arnold’s came out. The theme is similar, the aimlessness is kinda inherent for young people trying to figure out their own way in the game called life, regardless of someone’s socio-economic status. The other thing is hedonism and partying that rarely breaks the sub-cultural frames. And finally, Bezinović and Arnold both employ some documentarian techniques in their work.

The differences between the two films are notable, though. While Arnold’s characters come from the skid row milieu of American Midwest, Bezinović’s are middle-class to well-off urbanites, more spirited and spiritual. Their hedonism, even though totally within the rigid hipster frame, seems more genuine than Coca-Cola commercial-like parties in American Honey. The type of documentarism is also different, Bezinović shows more emotion towards his characters by keeping the camera fluidly moving around them in close vicinity, trading the grandeur of the statement for audio-visual poetry, while Arnold’s approach is more epic.

A Brief Excursion is not that much about the youth nowadays as it is going for universal, eternal questions of growing up, developing intellectually and spiritually, friendship and the relationship between the journey and the destination, the process and the goal. The source novel was first published in the 60‘s, in socialist Yugoslavia and through it Šoljan was examining the laziness and lack of motivation and courage to confront the authoritarian regime in the search of personal freedom and happiness. Fifty years later, the country and the regime are long gone, the new social frame is also more or less rigid and the revolution (that might be started from a bed, like in Oasis’ song) or a better world still seem like a futile dream.

Modest in the terms of budget, but with a rich and layered story and character development and very detailed in execution, A Brief Excursion is a film worth several viewings over the course of years. Small, but brilliant touches like the slight differences between the text spoken by the narrator and the picture seen on the screen and the sound design in which the ambiental sounds are mixed with occasional bursts of minimal ethno score could pass under the radar. While not necessarily being a masterpiece, A Brief Excursion is more than a sure-handed debut. It is pretty impressive.