Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.01.2007, Qupperneq 39

REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 01_007_INTERVIEW/FILMS_7
started to write because he’s really a good
writer, for me writing is... my father was a
writer. And me and my son went through the
father and son period when we didn’t speak
for a year, it’s normal, you have to kill your fa-
ther.” He lets out a hearty laugh, somewhere
in there is that strange mix of affection and
conflict that seems to characterise not only
his films but his nation. “And then he came
back to me and we worked together very
closely on this script and he’s very proud of
it, he’s fighting for the film even more than
me.”
But while inspired by Candide, The Opti-
mists is far from being an adaptation. It com-
prises five stories, the first and the last epi-
sode having the strongest ties to Voltaire’s
novel. In the first story a hypnotist travels to
a flooded town and tries to hypnotise the
entire village from their depression, often
paraphrasing the mantra of Candide’s tutor
Pangloss: “All is for the best in the best of
all possible worlds.” Then there is the final
episode that features a bus full of people
that are either blind, deaf, crippled or have
some other affliction that faith healers see as
a marketing opportunity. Travelling to a lake
that is supposed to heal all their ills they are
abandoned by their guide and go on foot,
searching for the magical lake, finding a pool
of mud. And they are happy in the mud,
blissful even.”
In Toronto they asked his son Vladimir,
the writer, how a young man could be so
dark. The 31-year-old Vladimir told them:
“Listen, in my generation, my friends, five
percent were killed in the war and sometimes
it feels all the rest moved abroad.” He echoes
his father, who has stated that his films never
have happy endings because they don’t have
happy endings in his country. “You can not
live in Serbia with all these troubles and not
reflect on what’s going on.” It wasn’t always
thus, he even made one comedy before the
war when Serbia was still just one part of old
Yugoslavia. But this war changed everybody,
created new borders and a new kind of film.
Radical Nationalism
We continue to connect the dots between
our two respective countries. “Serbia is a
pretty aggressive country. The people are
not happy. But there is something in their
character that has been there for centuries
I feel, the reaction that if somebody is suc-
cessful they want to push him down to the
same level everybody else is on. “How can
this guy do better than us?” they think and
do whatever they can to pull him down. Here
it seems to be the opposite. If somebody is
doing well, everybody is supportive.”
He continues: “I think jealousy and hate
have in a way become an illness in Serbia
because we are so poor and isolated now.
We were much richer before but after all the
conflicts the economy and the infrastructure
has been destroyed. So the new generation
just wants to go out. And we can hardly
travel because getting a visa is an enormous
problem. At four o’clock in the morning
you’ll see people waiting in front of embas-
sies just to be able to see their relatives. And
even if those young people get the visas they
don’t have the money to travel because the
average salary is around 300 Euros. So it’s
very hard for them. I read a study that stated
that only about 20 percent of them, even
less, had been abroad. Even counting neigh-
bouring countries like Hungary. So we have a
generation that has never travelled, that can
not compare our way of life to anything else.
It’s hard for them to see through all the pro-
paganda.”
I ask him if this generation consider them-
selves more Serbian than the ones before
them. “Yes, the nationalism is deeper now,
that’s what scares me. Because they listen
to the radio and the television all day telling
them that we’re not guilty, that it was the
western world that put us in this position.
And they start to believe it. They are simply
apathetic. They don’t vote, which scares me
a lot. That’s why the radical party, which is
aligned with Milosevic’s party and are ultra-
nationalist, has around 35 percent support
at the polls. Why? Because only 40 percent
of the population is likely to vote. The others
just say: “I don’t care, they are all the same.”
This radical party and those ex-Milosevic
forces still control the secret police to a large
degree. And those that do go usually don’t
return. Ten years ago a big wave of educated
young people left the country, mostly for
Canada, because they didn’t have any op-
portunities in Serbia. That’s great for the rad-
ical party because they deal very well with
the uneducated people, they don’t need the
educated people to wake the country up.”
The time to wake up, to see the world and
change their world, is now. Perhaps some-
thing Paskaljevic’s films can help with?
And then there is the unresolved con-
flict, a little place called Kosovo. “When The
Powder Keg opened in Venice I was inter-
viewed there and openly criticised the policy
in Kosovo. I felt it was completely wrong and
that Milosevic was leading us into a whole
new war. For that they attacked me on the
front pages of all the newspapers that were
controlled by Milosevic at the time, they
called me a traitor and said that if I was not in
jail I should shoot myself if I had any honour.
Some intellectuals were just shot like that in
the streets after similar articles. So I stayed
abroad for awhile, first in France and then
I got the opportunity to make a film in Ire-
land.” The situation in Kosovo is still fragile.
“We did horrible things in Kosovo, but after
the bombing campaign, when they signed
some sort of a peace treaty, the Albanians in
Kosovo did horrible things to the Serbs also.
But the Serbs are officially guilty so it will be
problematic. It will create a big Albania on
the map. They are against big Serbia, or Cro-
atia, and they will give Kosovo independence
and in 10, 20 years they’ll unite. But I think
the hope for all Balkan countries is Europe,
the EU. Once when all these borders, which
belong to the 19th century, don’t matter any-
more a lot of problems will be solved. Serbia
without Kosovo is already strong enough to
enter the EU. But it will need another genera-
tion. Maybe in 30, 40 years.”
He misses the old Yugoslavia and the freedom
and prosperity they once had. “Serbia was a
leader in the region, the whole of Yugosla-
via. A beautiful country full of diversities, my
generation was proud to be Yugoslavian, to
be able to travel around both in the east and
the west. We were never a hardline com-
munist country. Tito was very clever, he held
the country together without killing people.
They put some people in jail and you were
not completely free to do as you pleased but
it’s not like now when war criminals are mil-
lionaires. You don’t need a political party in
Serbia. If you have 100,000,000 Euros in the
bank you are a very powerful man. You can
buy power and bribe people.”
And it’s a hard cycle to break. “Those that
go abroad are hard workers, good workers.
I was amazed in Toronto when they told me
that they had 80,000 Serbian expatriates,
mostly young educated people. I met this girl
who is a secretary. She has her diploma and is
much more clever than any secretary I know,
but she said: “Listen, it’s a big company, a
film distribution company. If I do well I will
progress very fast here. So she’s ready to do
the work. If you’d ask her to be a secretary
in Belgrade she’d never accept it because she
knows that there she would stay a secretary
forever. You must see some hope. But how
can you have hope in Serbia if your salary is
300 Euros and you have to pay 400 Euros
for an apartment? Most young people still
live with their parents. I believe everybody
in their twenties should leave their parents’
house, but they simply can not afford it.”
Despite all this, Goran Paskaljevic is quietly
optimistic. He keeps on struggling, making
honest films about his homeland, stories
about all their contradictory traits, what is
that but hope? Optimism even.