A Serbian Film (2010)

How bad can a movie themed on
mid-century communist propaganda possibly be?!

A Serbian Film is one of those controversial movies you get once in a blue moon that the creators insist there is deeper meaning to, much to the disagreement of audiences and critics. Mark Kermode disputed there being any legitimate allegory being made by the movie, and it has gone down in recent history as one of the most horrifying films ever made. Having finally subjected myself to its uncut version, I am baffled as to how anybody can not recognise the statements being made. I know virtually nothing about Serbia, except for it having a history of severe unrest in many senses, but I could very explicitly identify what the movie was trying to convey. Despite what one might expect having heard the grisly keywords associated with it, A Serbian Film is a devastatingly effective movie with plenty of angst.

Miloš is a retired porn actor who has settled down with a wife and child, but given up a good income and lavish lifestyle in the process. Struggling to get by and realising a quiet part of him misses the guy he once was, he is informed by a former colleague of a filmmaker who is producing a new high art form of pornography, and wants Miloš as his star. Coddled beneath several layers of armed security guards is Vukmir, a sinister and eccentric multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder about the state of modern Serbian society. He is well practised in his prophetic rhetoric, ranting at length about what real art is, and what it is to feel and live. He wants to sign Miloš for big bucks, but is unwilling to tell his actor exactly what he will be performing, as part of some pornographic method acting school of thought or something.

No autographs, please.

Miloš is dubious about the unspecified nature of the work, but his wife Marija is heavily swayed by the money he will receive in return, so he decides to go for it. First day on set, Miloš is directed by Vukmir via an earpiece while flanked by several armed heavies holding cameras. Some odd domestic is going on between a mother and her adolescent daughter, both of whom go on to be central co-stars in this weird improv. By the second day, Miloš' convictions are being tested too hard by Vukmir's depraved setups, and he decides the next day to throw in the towel.

Suddenly Miloš awakens, hungover and bloodied, and it is three days later. Haunted and unable to find anybody he knows, he racks his brain for scraps of memory and tries to piece together what the hell happened to him. Through flashback and footage on a stolen camera, the movie takes us through Miloš' dreadful search for the truth, and we know things will somehow never been the same for him again.

Fans of Last House on the Left may recall that the original draft of its script was a more pornographically-oriented take on things, and as A Serbian Film was wrapping up, I couldn't help but compare it to Last House. It ultimately tells the same story, of an innocent and loving family torn apart by cruel outsiders, and how the family members react and are irreparably damaged by the ordeal. It is hard to classify either movie as horror, because they are really more like hard dramatic tragedies; they show us relatable and likeable characters whose terrible experiences stir emotional reactions in us as viewers. If I felt anything at the end of A Serbian Film, I felt sadness.

This is the greatest show!

Another element that these two movies have in common is that they narrate from the perspective of the family while framing them visually from the voyeuristic view of the aggressors. A Serbian Film is a very slickly produced picture, with sharp and very precise camerawork and sound. As we follow Miloš through this dark chapter, the camera always follows him like a stalker: we see him from over the shoulders of the people he converses with, or the corners of rooms. The feeling of being watched is intrinsically woven into the style of the movie, while sound forces the foreboding atmosphere upon us like a millstone, with inventive use of string plucking, static-like electronics and even what sounds like tearing paper. An incredible tension is created, starting with small tugs and stirs, and finally climaxing (eh-hem) in the film's closing minutes as an unbearable outburst.

This film is nothing short of ballsy. Srđan Todorović gets to show off an incredible range in the role of Miloš, and wouldn't work so well were it not for his courage to do exactly what the character requires of him. Were his performance to lack a certain emotion and vulnerability, we would not be able to feel for him anywhere near as much as we do by the time his nightmarish ordeal finally ends. I cannot imagine any of the roles in this movie being easy to fill for a director or for an actor, and every single person gives it their all, and absolute sincerity. Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir grasps just the right note of villainy and cunning. He is eccentric without being cartoonish, and measured enough for us to never quite peg him as a straight-up bad guy; he genuinely believes in what he does, and there is more to his motives than simply enjoying causing pain.

If this scene doesn't turn you on, you
clearly don't understand high art.

There is a great scene early on in the movie in which Miloš and Marija are in bed together watching one of his old skinflicks. They have the old "difference between love and fucking" discussion and Marija tells him that she quite fancies just being fucked once in a while. So he tries on the rough, underwear-tearing persona that he hung up years ago, and while she seems somewhat turned on by it, he clearly is not. The action cuts back and forth between the couple fucking, and Miloš' onscreen performance, before he recedes, turns his wife back over, starts to kiss her, and goes on to actually make love to her. This tells us so much about Miloš, and about his relationship with Marija. Although he clearly has the capacity (and from what we all hear, quite the knack) for your classic porn-style fucking, it is a compartmentalised section of his personality that he realises he doesn't like to open out into other sections, and just maybe, he has grown to dislike that side of himself.

Many an exploitation flick is accused of doing exactly what it says on the tin: exploiting suffering. More specifically, they are accused of 'glorifying' violence. A Serbian Film has definitely met its fair share of this vein of criticism, but it never once looks at violence through a rose tinted filter. Every second of pain is depicted as cruel and senseless, and despite its inherently sexualised framing, is never presented for titillation or kicks. It wants us to look at its content in the harsh, brutal way that it truly exists in the world, and ultimately, it wants our understanding of Miloš to grow as a result. The impact of the movie hinges on how we feel for the characters being wronged, not how gross and sensationalist it can be.

Uh... no homo.

The casual moviegoer is unlikely to accidentally stumble into this picture without any prior understanding of what they are getting themselves into, but let it be known: this is a gruesome and hard-hitting picture which in its uncut version uses some very disturbing imagery. It is stuff you won't shake off easily, but if you feel you can handle it, it is very worth seeing. I got so much more from watching this movie than I had anticipated, and am still somewhat surprised to be declaring it a moving and very effective piece.

I wonder what Roger Ebert would have made of this movie. Although he was still alive and critiquing when it came out, he never reviewed it. I feel like his 70s self - the same one that commended Last House - would have seen redeeming qualities in it, and perhaps even recommended it, much to the horror of the average moviegoer. In his mid-80s, Siskel-centric era, he may have decried it for its sexually-oriented violence. I know that by his twilight years, he had grown pretty damn tired of the hardcore exploitation flicks. That was his taste. I love me a hardcore exploitation flick, and A Serbian Film is as extreme as it gets in terms of content and context.