Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.01.2007, Blaðsíða 38

_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 01_007_INTERVIEW/FILMS
The Reykjavík Grapevine met with the Ser-
bian film director Goran Paskaljevic in a cosy
downtown hotel in Reykjavík. The surround-
ings are a world away from his most recent
films, a trilogy of sorts about Serbia during
and after the war. The two latest ones are
Midwinter Night’s Dream (San zimske noci)
and The Optimists (Optimisti). The name of
the third one, Bure baruta in Serbian, The
Powder Keg and sometimes Cabaret Balkan
in English.
“It was originally a theatre play written by
Dejan Dukovski, a young Macedonian writer.
I worked with him on the screenplay and we
changed it a lot but the title always remained
The Powder Keg and that was the title when
it opened in Venice. Then Paramount Classics
bought it to distribute in America and a cou-
ple of months later they called and said we
couldn’t use that title because Kevin Costner
had registered the title for a new film of his,
that incidentally never happened. It was ab-
surd, there were already articles and reviews
about The Powder Keg in Variety and other
places, but Costner didn’t want to give it up
and we had to change the title. I hated Cost-
ner at that time,” he adds with a grin.
The Stepfather’s Cinematheque
Paskaljevic was born in Belgrade but at the
age of two his parents separated and he
moved to his grandparents’ home in Niš, in
the south of what is now Serbia. As a teen-
ager he returned to live in the capital. He had
ambitions of becoming a writer and at the
age of 15 wrote a book of poetry, but admits
that reading the verses now he sees he didn’t
have the talent for it.
“My grandmother was sick so I went
back to Belgrade to live with my mother and
my stepfather. My stepfather made the pro-
grams for the cinematheque. He had been a
journalist earlier but had problems with the
authorities so he ended up working there,
but that suited him fine. He knew film his-
tory perfectly and it was his passion. I myself
had no money and no friends in Belgrade so
I went to the cinematheque all the time. He
gave me a small job there, to collect the tick-
ets at the entrance, and after collecting the
tickets I went inside and watched the films.
Some I watched five or six times. I watched
the masterpieces of Jean Renoir and many
other great masters. That’s where I fell in love
with films and decided to become a director
because I found that through films I could
express myself much better than through
literature. I remember De Sica’s The Bicycle
Thief (Ladri di bicicletti), I remember crying
and being so moved by it. But I wonder if
anyone in Iceland can relate to the title?” he
adds. I assure him that even if it’s not a com-
mon profession here due to lack of bicycles
we do have some thieves like that. “
After that I wanted to study film and
my stepfather, being knowledgeable about
the matter, told me about FAMU, the film
school in Prague, is. But it was hard to get
into. Out of between 100 and 150 applicants
they choose maybe ten. But I got in.” For
those readers who do not recognise FAMU,
the school’s alumni also includes such dis-
tinguished filmmakers as Milos Forman,
Paskaljevic’s fellow Serb Emir Kusturica, Ice-
landic director Börkur Gunnarsson and many
more.
Autistic Nation
The second film of the trilogy, Midwinter
Night’s Dream, is a very different from the
others despite being part of the same trilogy.
Not least because of Lazar’s speech, a tale of
a soldier who has witnessed scenes so hor-
rible in the Serbian-Croatian war, they have
driven him mad. Mad and out of the army.
When the film starts, ten years have passed
and he is a changed man, out of prison, a
gentle soul that for the twists of fate finds a
woman and her autistic daughter in his home
when he returns. The speech is Lazar’s dark
night of the soul, and while nothing is really
shown, the dialogue and Lazar Ristovski’s
delivery of it is tense enough to make it an
unforgettable cinematic experience.
But it is also a love story, a story of a man
that finds a woman to love and a little girl to
fight for. While dancing with Jovana, Marija’s
autistic daughter, he desperately whispers
into her ear: “Wake up, wake up!” But we
feel it’s not only for her, it’s also for himself,
and ultimately a desperate plea by Paskaljevic
himself to his nation.
“When doing The Powder Keg I wanted
to express the violence that surrounded us
when Milosevic was in power. The war had
just finished and he started to make aggres-
sions in Kosovo. After Milosevic fell from
power and was sent to Hague many of us
that had immigrated returned. Most of us
came back to our country full of hope, but it
didn’t last. In 2003 the Prime Minister, Zoran
Djindjic, was killed. He had sent Milosevic to
the Hague and the war profiteers who had
started to buy their way back into Serbia
were responsible for the assassination. They
are still there. When Djindjic, who was also a
very dear friend of mine, was killed I started
to lose hope. How can you live freely in this
country if they kill the Prime Minister in the
street? I felt that as a society we are going
through a kind of autism, metaphorically
speaking. Then I started thinking about real
autism and went to the hospital and met this
little girl and fell absolutely in love (Jovana
Mitic, who plays the autistic girl in the film),
she’s adorable. Then I met her parents and
spent a couple of months with them and
then decided to do the film.”
How did the Serbians react to being
characterised as autistic? “It wasn’t easy, you
know. At the premiere there was a big ap-
plause, but at the premiere you have your
friends present, even if you also sell some
tickets. And when we went outside a couple
of people shouted at me: “Traitor! Traitor!”
It wasn’t just that I made a metaphoric film
about autism. It’s when Lazar delivers the
speech about what happened to him in the
war, why he left. It was the first time that
a Serbian director or artist said: let’s admit
it, we committed horrible crimes in the war.
The story Lazar narrates is a true story. I had
wanted to do something about the war and
I interviewed people about it while prepar-
ing another movie, one that never got made.
And I got this story from a man who had lost
both his legs. While running away after de-
serting the army, having fled the scene de-
scribed in the movie, he paused for a breath
and stepped on a mine, losing both legs.
They tell me, “It’s not true, how can you say
that? What will the world think about us
when they see the movie?” I reply: “What
is the world thinking about what we have
done?” So I’m always attacked for not show-
ing Serbia the way they want us to show it.”
The Actor
The Serbian actor Lazar Ristovski plays a big
role in all these films. Ristovski, most famous
for his role in Emir Kusturica’s Underground,
is a charismatic actor, possibly the most rec-
ognizable of Serbian actors, armed with a
menacing glare and a kind heart. “He’s a
very strong actor so you have to really hold
him back sometimes. It probably worked
better in Midwinter Night’s Dream, because
he was so completely dedicated to that film
and we spent a lot of time working with the
actors. When you are in the presence of this
girl (Jovana Mitic) you never know what she’s
gonna do, so it’s a very special atmosphere. I
knew how she was going to act from time to
time because I started to know her very well
and she had complete confidence in me but
you cannot communicate with her. You can’t
say do this or do that. You just have to put
the camera on her and suppose what she is
going to do and then catch these fantastic
moments when she is completely spontane-
ous.”
It wasn’t easy for Ristovski either. “I actu-
ally said to Lazar: “Listen, you don’t have to
meet the girl now, you’re going to meet her
in front of the camera. And the scene when
he enters the apartment and they meet for
the first time is really authentic. And after
that I was shooting some other scenes while
I gave him seven days to know Jovana, the
girl, better. It was hard work and a challeng-
ing experiment for him. In The Optimists I
had to hold him back more, because he is
so strong and I need to give all the other
characters some space, there are some 45
actors in the film. So it’s always a fight with
Lazar, because he’s strong and he can be
even more strong then necessary and that
has happened sometimes. But I think his best
work is Midwinter’s Night Dream. He abso-
lutely entered into the character and it was a
fantastic period for us. It’s more than just a
film, it was a human experience.”
Candid Optimism
His most recent film, The Optimists (Optimis-
ti) opened this fall. It takes place in recent-
day Serbia but much of the inspiration came
from a 250-year-old French novel, Voltaire’s
Candide. “I stated that I didn’t believe in
fake optimism. We have elections in Serbia
in December, and there and everywhere in
the world, politicians are trumpeting fake
optimism, everything must be positive. Filip
David, a writer I often work with, told me
that if I wanted to do something with that
I should read Candide again. So I started to
think about the theme. I read Candide and
was completely amazed by how modern it
was. That somebody in Serbia is ready to use
it as an inspiration for a modern film, 250
years after it was written, that shows a re-
ally strong spirit for a book. Then I imagined
the film with a hypnotist travelling to Serbia,
helping depressed people to get out of their
depression. But the script quickly became
very complicated and with the first draft it
would have been far too expensive. I was
pretty downcast about it but then Vladimir,
my son, told me to read his unfinished book.
He had a lot of similar themes there, even a
story called The Optimists. So I read his un-
finished book of nine short stories and he re-
ally became a good writer, you know. Then I
proposed to him that we’d make a screenplay
together and make the film episodic, an om-
nibus that Ristovski later tied together play-
ing different characters in each episode.”
The connection between literature and
film is interesting in the Paskaljevic fam-
ily. Goran’s father was a writer, he himself
wanted to become a writer but became a
director and for the son it was the other way
around. “He did a couple of shorts and he
couldn’t get the money for his first feature
and I wasn’t sure he had a very good script.
I told him that your first film must be some-
thing great. It doesn’t matter if you are 30
or 35 when doing your first film, don’t rush.
You need to have a cheap project, but at the
same time an excellent project. And then he
The Optimistic Serb
Text by Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson Photos by Leó Stefánsson