CABARET BALKAN (BURE BARATA) (director/writer: Goran Paskaljevic; screenwriters: Dejan Dukovski/Filip David/Zoran Andric/ based on the play "The Powder Keg" by Dejan Dukovski; cinematographer: Milan Spasic; editor: Petar Putnikovic; cast: Nebojsa Glogovac (Taxi Driver), Miki Manojlovic (Michael), Marko Urosevic (Alex), Bogdan Diklic (Jovan), Dragan Nikolic (Jovan's boxer friend), Danilo 'Bata' Stojkovic (Viktor), Aleksandar Bercek (Dimitri, crippled ex-cop), Voja Brajovic (Topi), Mirjana Jokovic (Ana), Nikola Ristanovski (Boris), Ana Sofrenovic (Beautiful Woman On Train), Mira Banjac (Bosnian Serb mother), Ivan Bekjarev (Angry Youth on Bus), Toni Mihajovoksi (George), Dragan Jovanovic (Kosta); Runtime: 102; Paramount Classics; 1998-Yugoslavia/France)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A depiction of hell, resulting in a messy, sweeping political picture set in 1995, where all the action takes place on a 12 degree winter night in Belgrade, showing a breakdown in 'Law and Order.' The police are numerous, but they turn a blind eye to justice and act only as contributors to the problems of the former country known as Yugoslavia. "Cabaret Balkan" is a loosely done series of repulsive vignettes, all reflecting the bleakness of the war-torn country and the director Goran Paskaljevic's (Someone Else's America) adverse reaction to what evil President Slobodan Milosevic has wrought on Serbia. It was brutal to watch, more intense and more in your face than more recent films on Serbia, one that had no subtlety or artistic edge, as the gruesome little scenes ran together in a heavy-handed manner and no voice of reason emerged, or no one to sympathize could be found, except for the all too obvious loss of overall humanity that was pictured. There isn't, unfortunately, one thing to take away from this film that could help you understand the situation better, except to truly see the hopelessness of the situation, and one could have gotten that from reading the newspapers. It's the kind of film that might have a greater impact in the homeland (which it did) than throughout the world, as it gives the people of Belgrade a chance to look in the mirror and see what they look like to the rest of the world.
The film opens at the nightclub called Cabaret Balkan and a surly M.C., Boris (Nikola Ristanovski), dressed with black eye shadow and appearing to be androgynous, angrily tells us he is going to fuck with our minds. He is our tour guide and by the film's end his confidence will also be shattered as he drunkingly falls on his face.
A series of sketches, all sadistically violent begin, as a young unlicensed taxi driver named Alex (Marko) while trying to to pick up a young woman, loses sight of the traffic and bangs into a car causing a fender bender. The police can't resolve things and road rage takes over, so Jovan (Bogdan), the one whose car was smashed, goes to Alex's apartment with his boxer friend (Dragan) and becomes irrational, smashing up the apartment, causing Alex to run away, fearing for his life. This is something that could happen in the States, but not likely to this extreme because more than likely the police would have resolved it.
In another sketch, a Bosnian professor, now a bus driver, urges his son to also become a bus driver -- saying he is lucky to have a job. But the son says he wants something better and goes to work for Topi (Vojislav Brajovic), a former revolutionary who is now a vicious cocaine dealer.
An unnamed chain-smoking taxi driver (Nebojsa Glogovac), goes into a bar and tells the policeman sitting there with a neckbrace, Dimitri (Bercek), who has numerous bones broken and can never work again, after some unknown assailant attacked him with a hammer and a crowbar. The taxi driver tells him he did it as payback for what he did to him when he was a kid.
Probably the most violent sketch, in a film that was a total gross-out (and I couldn't argue if you chose another scene as more sadistic), is the one between two longtime friends sparring at a gym. When one of them (Lazar Ristovkski) sheepishly tells his partner that he had sex with the other man's wife while he was away in the army, the other says, she's only a woman, as he sports a big grin. As they continue sparring, the pair begin swapping confessions throughout the years. One poisoned the other's dog and is not only the former lover of his wife but he's the father of the other's son. The punches get harder and the conflict ends in the shower as one fatally attacks the other with a broken beer bottle.
When the killer (Lazar) runs away and boards a train in a drunken stupor, he spots an attractive woman (Sofrenovic) reading in the compartment and attempts to rape her, but she pulls out of her luggage a hand-grenade her dead soldier husband gave her, and they both get blown up in each other's arms, wrestling for the grenade, as he takes the grenade from her with his brute strength and pulls the pin while holding onto her so she can't escape his death wish. This serves as a perfect metaphor for what the director is saying about the current thugs running the country.
The parade of violence continues with no let up, when an angry youth (Ivan Bekjarev) boards a bus, intimidates some of the older passengers and gets so pissed that the driver is 15 minutes late and what makes the young man even angrier, is that he sees the driver nonchalantly drinking coffee, not caring one bit about the passengers. So he takes the bus for a joy ride. He then flusters a young woman (Mirjana) by fondling her, cutting off her blouse button with his knife, and making her spread her legs while he forces an old man to look at her.
When she flees the bus, after the bus driver returns to attack the young man, she meets her jealous boyfriend George (Toni Mihajovoksi), who berates her for being in that situation, as they drive to get cocaine from Topi. Once there, Topi and his inexperienced sidekick intimidate the couple and Topi attempts to humiliate her by stripping her and breaking her fingers and is about to rape her, when the young man drops his gun aghast at the rape and George picks up the gun, humiliated after being forced to sing a Macedonian song, and he therefore has no trouble with his conscience in shooting Topi. The inexperienced young man runs into the street and is mistaken for a gas thief as a mob corners him when he tries to climb a fence to escape. In the background a match is dropped by the omnipresent taxi driver and a gas explosion envelopes the area where the parked cars that were siphoned are at.
The film had a raw power to it which cannot be denied, but that power was also the film's main fault, as everything about it was just too obvious and too bleak, it couldn't stop showing a country that seemed to have lost every ounce of its humanity, making every character out to be either a loser or a sadist -- probably not unlike President Milosevic and his constituents. The film's theme is simply taken from a quote by one of its characters: "This is a goddamned lousy country; why would anyone want to come back?'' That seems to be true from what I have seen, but the question for me, Is why would anyone want to see this film? And, I think the answer is, that in all the brutality shown, it is hard to deny that there is a truth that the film shows. The horrors of that country seem to be an everyday thing, and after seeing this film, one can only feel dazed and revolted by what is going on. But this is not an entertaining film (I don't consider the film's gallows humor to be entertaining) and it is not for those who like their war films with good guys they can identify with... . It's a message film, saying these kind of horrors happened many times in history before and they will continue to happen if we forget history. To hammer home that point, it mentions how the country forgot what it was like to be ruled by the Turks for 500 hundred years and by the Krauts during WW11, and how easy it is for other countries to be mistaken that all this violence can't happen to them, also. I have no problem that the film wasn't entertaining, my problem with the film was that it wasn't informative about the human condition in a way that wasn't so obvious and in a way that could involve the viewer more with its characters.
REVIEWED ON 12/12/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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