A Film a Week - Tower of Strength / Obraz

 previously published on Cineuropa

A word of honour stronger than any other obligation, according to the Code of Lekë Dukagjini – which served as the unassailable law among Albanians for centuries – is the starting point for the third feature by Montenegrin filmmaker Nikola Vukčević, Tower of Strength. Set in the mountainous areas of Montenegro populated by Albanians during World War II, it depicts the conflict between an SS division unit and an honourable house over the destiny of a boy from an Orthodox village who found refuge there. After its world premiere at Cottbus, the movie is now screening at the Cairo Film Festival.

In his local area, Nuredin Doka (Kosovar-Dutch actor and filmmaker Edon Rizvanolli) is respected as a hero and the representative of his family clan, who respects the Code but is not immune to making a judgement in favour of human life. That is how he let go of the feud with the rival Gjonaj clan and adopted their son instead of killing him. During the war, Nuredin opts to sit it out, minding his own business and surviving by hunting with his son Mehmet (newcomer Elez Adžović), since he does not want to choose sides between the cowardly Nazi supporters and the atheistic communist partisans. But although he is keeping out of trouble, trouble finds him in the form of a boy called Vuk (Vuk Bulajić), who has escaped the massacre in his village and found refuge in Nuredin’s house.

The house is soon surrounded by SS troops led by the fearsome and brutal, but cowardly, Abid (Aleksandar Radulović). One of his subordinates is Sokol Gjonaj (Alban Ukaj, seen in the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita), a man who has immense respect for Nuredin and feels obliged to facilitate the negotiations between the sides. With no solution in sight, the tension of the stand-off builds up to a climax. However, the internal fight that Nuredin wages with himself, whether to protect the lives of his family members, or his and his family’s honour and good name, is even more tense.

Tower of Strength is a very old-fashioned piece of cinema, for better or for worse. This means that the dialogues written by Ana Vujadinović and Melina Pota Koljević (of Circles fame), with the assistance of Vukčević, sometimes sound too over-written, literal and theatrical in an attempt to channel the depth of the ethical dilemma at the film’s centre. Luckily, the perfectly chosen actors have enough presence to make it work, and this doesn’t just go for Edon Rizvanolli, Alban Ukaj and Aleksandar Radulović, in the “meatiest” roles, but also for veteran thesp Selman Jusufi as Nuredin’s father, Branimir Popović as an army commander, and Nikola Ristanovski as the village judge and the interpreter of the Code.

The directing uses broad strokes, such as omnipresent, ethnic-sounding music by Dušan Maksimovski and an emphasis on the production values through Đorđe Stojiljković’s attractive camerawork. There is also a lot of attention paid to the period details, which can be observed from the production and costume design, as well as from the choice of authentic-looking locations. Edited by Olga Toni and the director himself, Tower of Strength is a tight piece of cinema that evokes the traditional genres of a war movie and a western, without ever over-using the genre approach to the detriment of the drama at the film’s core.

A Film a Week - The Black Pin / Igla ispod praga

A Film a Week is a weekly column on this blog, run on Sunday for our English-language readers and friends, presenting usually local or European festival films to a wider audience. Every review is directly written and not translated.

The idea of Montenegrin cinema died about the same time Yugoslavia collapsed in its bloody wars. Since then, there wasn’t much interesting or good films, the production rate was about one feature film a year (usually populist comedies and festival circuit misfires, with just few exceptions like The Ascent). The population of just above 600,000 inhabitants and minimal academia infrastructure did not create a good environment for a budding film scene, and the foundation of national film centre is only a recent development. In that situation, Prague-educated writer-director Ivan Marinović and his charming debut feature The Black Pin are more then good news.

The place is the peninsula of Luštica, the time is now. People are rushing to sell the small portions of land they have to whomever that comes first, usually the Russians. A group of locals has hatched a plan to sell a big piece of land to a British investment fund interested in building a resort there. But there’s a catch: an old woman that has the reputation of a local witch dies before they can make deal with her, leaving the land to distant relatives scattered from South America to Australia. The only alternative for them is to convince the local priest Petar to join their plan.

That could be a problem, since Petar (Macedonian actor Nikola Ristanovski) is not much interested in ephemeral things like money as he is interested in fond memories of his long-gone father, taking care of his demented mother (Yugoslav icon Seka Sablić in one of her crazier parts) and trying to bring up his teenage son Đorđe (débutante Filip Klicov) since his wife left him. More to the point, Petar is quite misanthropic and bitter, and is not on particularly good terms with the men (Serbian character actor Ljubomir Bandović and Croatian chameleon Leon Lučev among others) who are planning to sell and has no wish to help them. Can the retired seaman Dondo (Bogdan Diklić, good as always) help them find some common ground?

The Black Pin is a bit of slice-of-life bittersweet comedy-dramas that can get lost in side-plots and sub-plots that go nowhere. Sometimes, that happens here too, there is a sub-plot or two too much and that time could be better spent developing meaningful relations between characters and adding another dimension to their conflict. But the overall feeling is that Marinović is more interested in the atmosphere and the mood of the local area than in the plot and character details. Well-acted, confidently directed and masterfully shot in chiaroscuro contrasts, The Black Pin works best as a love letter to a place, the director’s childhood and all the local legends and anecdotes every Adriatic village has.

The whole set-up is Mediterranean and Adriatic as it could be, echoing the mentality plays that are typical for neighbouring Dalmatian authors like Miljenko Smoje and both Brešans, late writer Ivo and his filmmaker son Vinko. But The Black Pin’s biggest influence was legendary Yugoslav-era filmmaker Živko Nikolić, who tackled the themes of modernity and freedom (and the lack of it) in traditional, confined, almost insular societies and family units of Montenegro in different periods of time. His work was locally colored, mesmerizing, darkly funny, but also pessimistic. He often lamented that modernity and personal freedom never stood a real chance in underdeveloped society and the conservative tendencies only switched forms throughout the time.

Marinović has done his homework. Like Nikolić, he is locally focused and colourful in the way he is portraying the area and its people, but his themes of miscommunication and opposing world-views are not just mentality play, they are universal for mankind. But compared to often cynical and misanthropic Nikolić, Marinović is more light-hearted and actually cares for his characters. It is obvious that The Black Pin is a work of passion that can serve as a landmark in Montenegrin cinema.