CABARET BALKAN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
"You've heard about this city," Topi (Voja Brajovic) says about the war-ravaged Belgrade. "It's much worse. The Balkans are a powder keg."
Goran Paskaljevic's ironically named CABARET BALKAN (BURE BARUTA) was originally titled THE POWDER KEG. The movie was filmed entirely at night because, according to the press notes, the director feels that "night has fallen on my country."
The relentlessly depressing story is well acted but hard to watch. The only sympathetic character is a puppy that appears briefly. The large cast of unhappy characters are uniformly angry at each other and the world as they are forced to live a marginalized existence in a city with few legal jobs left.
The script by Dejan Dukovski, based on his play, is composed of a series of partially related vignettes of desperation. In one of these, two long-time friends have what starts as a harmless argument. Although they share a nervous laughter, the tragic result is anything but funny.
Another incident has a rebelliously angry youth hijacking a bus. After terrorizing the passengers with a knife, he leaves them with little life lessons to ponder.
Some of the episodes are less hostile, as the one in which a professor has to drive a bus for a living. His problem one night is that he can't get his needed caffeine fix before his shift starts because the gas is off again in his cramped apartment.
"For you it's funny," the transvestite performer in the nightclub Cabaret Balkan tells the audience. "For me it's horrible, kids." Certainly living in a city in which the inhabitants pulverize each other with little compassion would be hard. To remind us of how bleak and inhospitable their environment is, the script has the city's residents averaging one F-word per sentence.
Looking for a depressing film in an obscure foreign language, filled with anger and random acts of senseless violence? CABARET BALKAN is it. Although this is just the high-minded sort of film that critics tend to love, most moviegoers will avoid this movie like the plague. And if they do go, they will probably find it long and tedious. As tragic as the situation is in the former Yugoslavia, CABARET BALKAN provides few fresh insights and little compelling reason to see the movie.
CABARET BALKAN runs 1:40. The movie is in Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles. It is rated R for strong violence including an act of sexual assault, strong language and some drug use. It would be acceptable for teenagers only if they are older and mature.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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