 | The Wounds (Rane) Starring: Dusan Pekic, Milan Maric, Dragan Bjelogrlic, Branka Katic, Miki Manojlovic, Vesna Trivalic, Andreja Dijabola |
Coming of age, Serbian style, this harrowing nightmare is set in Belgrade during the Serbian campaign against non-Serbs in 1991-1997. In particular, the hatred of Croats for their collaboration with the Nazis in WW II is the basis for inflating the ancient Serbian Nationalist Psychosis into a chest pounding revenge. Ironically, the Serbs share the same wilful ignorance that inflamed the Germans in Nazi Germany. Television broadcasts spew the same paranoid glorification of violence, while pictures of Sloba are dutifully nailed over mantles. Seen through the eyes of the narrator, Pinki (Pekic)--first as slothful teenager, then as a young man turned gangster--and his offsider "Kraut" (Maric), the gradual disintegration of life in the city corresponds with the boys' drug induced descent into a sociopathic, almost pre-infantile madness; life stripped of all meaning other than reacting violently to the very next hormonal pimple pop or delusion. In stark contrast to teenagers in countries not 500 kilometres away, these boys spend each moment as if it were their last, and indeed, the future is a joke to them. They are in love with their penises and their guns, firing them often, as they terrorise the helpless, and even at each other in a climax that signifies nothing if not the emptied end of a civilisation historically dominated by unformed male aggression. Though this is a film of biting black humour, there is little comic relief. Only when Pinki tricks "Kraut's" grandmother into smoking pot (under the ruse of the only tobacco they can find) and snorting coke (medicine from the chemist), do we get a few laughs. And that is because the old woman likes to have a good laugh. But later, when she laughs at the boys on a live TV show, in a bizarre scene in which "Kraut" shoots himself in the leg to show what a macho dude he is, you know the laughter is covering up the horror her life has always been in this very weird part of the world. As for the other women in the film, they are little more than frightened stick figures with powerful vaginas. Non-Serbs have difficulty understanding what drives the Serbian mentality, but directors like Dragojevic are helping. We are all human beings in the end, with different heredities and circumstances. Don't miss this film, but be prepared to remain pinned to the back of your seat in wide-eyed disbelief. Harold Hark Dusan Pekic died in March 2000 from gun shot wounds, allegedly self-inflicted. |