by Allan Fish
(Serbia 2010 104m) DVD2 (from October 2010)
Aka. Srpski film
A kind of cartoon for grown-ups
p Srdjan Spasojevic d Srdjan Spasojevic w Aleksandar Radivojevic, Srdjan Spasojevic ph Nemanja Jovanov ed Darko Simic m Sky Wikluh art Nemanja Petrovic cos Jasmina Sanader
Srdjan Todorovic (Milos), Sergej Trifunovic (Vukmir), Jelena Gavrilovic (Marija), Katarina Zutic (Lejla), Slobodan Bestic (Marko), Ana Sakic (Jecina Majka), Lena Bogdanovic (Doctor), Miodrag Krcmarik (Rasa), Lidija Pletl (Jecina Baka),
Imagine yourselves in the arms of Morpheus, drifting as if unconsciously like Jean Marais in Orphée, guided by one’s own Heurtebise, like Virgil guiding Danté through the seven circles of hell. This is not just any hell, however, but cine-hell. We pass the forbidding antechamber labelled with a garish picture of a toilet. Through that door we pass into the realms of cine-excretion, films so unpardonably puerile and amateurish, the dross of the mainstream, that to watch them in perpuity would be a special form of hell. My guide would seem to have something less flimsy in store for me. We walk on, through the concentric circles of this inferno, past a room devoted to the depiction of it in film, past the doors to which lead the extremities of the cinematic art, from Irreversible to Baise Moi!, from The Image to Inside, and finally wound up at a truly forbidding entrance. To the side of the door, a sign, in some form of Slav language, with what looked to be a picture showing some form of orphanage or care home. Above the door, the forbidding words, in Latin, well known to many, Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate.
Spasojevic’s apocalyptic vision details a retired male porn-star who has financial worries and sees a way out in the form of an artistic porn film offered to him by a shady businessman called Vukmir, but who refuses to tell him what it’s about and what will happen over the course of a shoot. We’re instantly alarmed, images of snuff movies circulating in our heads, visions of pubescent girls put before the protagonist. This could be a hairy road, we think. Suffice it to say that nothing can prepare you for what follows, but rather it needed someone to come out from behind the curtains to give a pre-credit warning, like Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of Frankenstein all those years ago. I remember his words, “…it may shock you…it may terrify you.”
When I first saw the film I entered it in my Final Apologies section and ended it with the words “nothing could persuade me to watch it again.” And then a week or two later I remember that was just how I felt after the first viewing of Irreversible, Baise Moi! and various other extreme tests of a cineaste’s stomach and morality. If those films now seem like masterworks of sorts was it not my duty to give it another go? More words from Danté rushed to subconscious recollection, in particular one very apt for the film in question; “the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” To wave the film away was to dismiss it, and to dismiss it is, in its own way, an act of apathetic cowardice. I had to watch it again, or else send myself four white feathers in the post; a pox on your desertion.
Again, sequences sickened, disturbed, outraged, a plot centring round a man trying to piece together lost days, a total recall from beyond your worst nightmares. The final gruesome bloodbath encourages delight at certain sickos getting what is coming to them, and yet even that hell is blown asunder by the final revelation which I won’t give away, but which leaves you feeling quite literally raped and left for dead. Some would argue watching such a film makes valid the point about what some individuals watch for entertainment, and yet when such outrages happen in war – to the self-same women and children – we turn a blind eye, it’s not our business. Not merely an attack on the senses but a “J’Accuse” directed at the modern world, at one extreme level it could be seen as a sick satire, but either way it has a feral, intestine-churning power that so few films can hope to achieve. Impossible to recommend to anyone, but even harder to forget, burnt into the retina with a branding iron like a new Holocaust. Et in infernus ego.
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Yes, this caught my attention recently when I read that the British Board of Film Classification refused to even allow a festival to watch it without cuts. I had not been aware that they were still censoring films in this manner and knew that this offering had to be particularly offensive/grotesque for it to be the case. Knowing what I now know about the film, I feel sickened enough already.
I have no wish to clamour onto a moral high horse here. I have too many failings for that. However, I am bemused as to how it is either cowardice or moral neutrality to not want to see this film (again). Are we really so depraved and desensitised now that we need to see some of the reported acts in this film before we either can contemplate their sheer brutality or feel utterly repelled by them? Or was your point something else again?
Not an accusation of cowardice at everyone, Longman, but at myself. I’d like to consider myself a reasonably liberal film buff and able to rise above what I can only call Daily Mail conservatism and should be able to put any immediate revulsions aside, as I did with the other films listed. Whatever else, ASF is powerful filmmaking and, if not one for anyone’s favourite list (I could never recommend it to any close friend as it may upset them as it did me), that doesn’t make it less powerful.
As for the cuts, the BBFC expressly forbids any material which shows children viewing an act of sexual intercourse and have cut nearly four mins out of the film. They also cut the end rape scene in Kids by about a minute for the same reason. Though I can applaud wanting to protect children at any cost and understand their decision (a critical central scene involves the protagonist being forced to watch a sick film involving the abuse of a baby – though the reaction in the man’s face says far more than anything shown on the screen within the film), no film should be cut, it should rather not be released at all in said country. Let’s face it, serious film buffs will always find ways to download the film online uncut or get original DVDs from other countries.
OR– the most reasonable answer would be to not let children see KIDS, or this film, etc…
Thanks Allan. Re the second para, I am confused by this response! Are you saying that an 18s-rated film has to cut scenes showing children watching sex in order to protect children? How does that make sense please? It sounds rather Irish to be honest in its logic!
I am not doubting you, by the way. I am genuinely interested in learning about this!
There’s a scene early in the film where a child is watching a porno, and it’s cut accordingly, though the sex in the porno is of course simulated.
In Kids, if you recall, when Justin Pierce rapes Chloe Sevigny’s character, another boy, half awake, is lying next to them on the sofa, hence the cuts then. I agree, it’s ludicrous. It was OK to watch the antihero deflower a 13 year old virgin in the opening scene, but not fine for a 12 year old to watch two 17 year olds having sex.
But the main cuts come from the horrific last act.
That really is cuckoo.
Not sure of the context, but is the approbation due to the actual presence of a child actor on set alongside the simulated sex act? In other words, is about the actuality of what one’s seeing (disapproval of the technique), rather than the fictional action taking place (disapproval of the content)?
So this is one of those “view at your own risk” kind of films then? I am wondering how it compares to Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist.” Longman Oz isn’t an advocate I see.
Antichrist is Bambi in comparison. There simply is no comparison.
Yes, I’ve also seen this film (great review Allan).
To answer Longman, sometimes I think about extreme films as just a long chain, they need to just go farther then what’s come before them. In extreme terms people with call this ‘sick’ (as it amounts to violence for violence sake), but in every other genre it’s considered an afterthought (comedy films have to build off what’s come before them)… I always think of the lyric for ‘I don’t like Mondays’ about the McDonalds shooting, where a girl shot up and killed a few in a McDonalds and when asked why, offered “I don’t like Mondays”. But then in the next verse Bob Geldof offered “What reason do you really need?” ( If the people in Mcdonalds are dead what will knowing the reason do?) This film offers brutality and savagery just as the world does. We can’t explain it when its in the news, so why explain it in films… all we should ask films of this sort are that they are accurate in the portrayal.
Yes, I also think ANTICHRIST is rather easy to get through compared to this– a lot of this has to do with ANTICHRIST’s aggression and savagery being contained in the last act. This is pretty much from ‘go’.
Speaking of savage, Allan will be seeing ANGST soon… a German masterpiece of the genre from 1982 (that makes HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER look like Bambi, but it’s also a fantastic art film).
I’m also continually amazed that you like BAISE-MOI, I think that’s a poorly made feminist romp… though not nearly extreme (well maybe for very conservative tastes) I’d reach for de Heer’s ALEXANDRA’S PROJECT instead.
I had just read about ANGST the other day and thought it looked intriguing — so I take it you would recommend it Jamie? I shall give it a further look.
Oh, I adore ANGST it’s pretty unbelievable. If you can track it down with english subs see it.
It would have made my top 10 horror films had I seen it before the cut off date. Though I plan on writing about it for my extreme series that should begin sometime after the horror countdown concludes.
I’d refute the logic of your arguement Jamie. Some comedies were inspired by others to create their own bits of funny business, Keaton and Chaplin and Lloyd zinging off each other. At best, the Marx brothers and others created their own worlds but influenced others. A routine may be copied, or screwball comedies inspire Bogdonavich, but it’s not the same at all. Comedy is a natural human mechanism for the relief of stress, between a couple, a group or a culture.
Yes, violence does occur in war, when politics goes wrong – though war is just a physical means of politics.
Why does it matter when a gunman goes on a spree? To find the causes and fix them. The same way if people in a new factory started dying of cancers because it cost too much to fix that pesky leak in the corner, we’d be outraged – not accepting casually some karma.
The logical conclusion is that the next step would be to show the images in the example Allan cited earlier, maybe to show the depravities inflicted on men, women and children in war or otherwise using CGI.
If Extremity in films is what you see, Extremity in life is what get and resort to. Garbage in, garbage out. And people wonder why teens are running around bing drinking. A 1,000 channels and nothing to watch, a 1,000 Stepford cinemas that show films that could have come from Pottersville (It’s a Wonderful Life’).
whoops, I do come off as a moralist. Ah well, each to their own.
well comparing cancer– coming from chemicals in a factory to a lone crazed gunman. Yeah that’s stacking the cards (and argument) in your favor. It’s also apples to oranges.
And teenagers binge drink because extreme films? I’ve heard it all, and no not all extreme films are ‘trash’.
Thanks for the responses, but none quite address the point that I was making, unfortunately! I am not questioning whether or not the film should be made. Jamie’s comment is a textbook defence of that and one that resonates with me greatly.
Equally, I am not interested in what the reactionary media have to say on anything to do with the arts! After all, they hoist up their skirts and shriek at anything mildly liberal-minded. Rather, I am interested in a far more calibrated discussion here.
To put this another way, I agree (based on what I know of it) that ASF is miles beyond anything that ANTICHRIST ever depicted. Equally, ANTICHRIST (despite some ridiculous early reviews from Cannes) was both highly symbolic and a fascinating meshing together of sex, grief, guilt, science, Nature, the Bible, gender, etc. You could spend a long time talking about what the writer/director wished to say and how he said it.
Now, perhaps it is just initially shocked reactions (as many reviews are like photostats of each other), but what Allan said above is one of the few reviews prepared to make any form of intelligent justification for why this work was made.
Therefore, as per my initial query, am I being morally neutral/cowardly in not wishing to see this work please? Is there a strong intellectual basis to this work, as with ANTICHRIST, or is one simply justifying it on the basis that the world is a bad place, so a specialised form of cinema should not be afraid to replicate just how bad it can be?
The fact remains I cannot recommend it to anyone, Longman. I refuse to recommend it because it is so alienating. It must be the individual’s choice to watch it and they alone be held accountable.
As for intellectual basis, not the degree of Antichrist, though that was also an act of homage to Tarkovsky. Better to take A Serbian Film as a descent into hell. Thirty years ago we looked upon The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as such a film. Personally, I find A Serbian Film more comparable to Salo, which also revulsed EVERYONE at the time and only now is seen by many as a masterwork.
That was understood. Anyway, even if you did recommend a film, the ultimate decision to watch it or not is still my own! Silly to ever blame anyone else for one’s own conscious actions.
Longman, I know you weren’t really playing the moral card I was just sort of speaking generally.
I am going to watch the film again tonight (I had planned tonight with the idea that is was going up thursday) to be able to comment further. I watched it once when I obtained it and it was the last film I watched on a saturday of three rather extreme-ish films so I was somewhat raw by that point. I think it’s soaked in a little and tonight’s viewing I’l be able to think about it and the questions you pose specifically. (and I see above Allan also needed another watch too)
I will initially say that it is artistic in a way that things that break barriers are… that can be enough (and what I was sort of getting at), when films are in such a tightly defined niche like the ‘extreme’ genre is, just advancing the goalposts a little farther is much of the intellectual underpinning/value. Think about Baudelaire or artists of that ilk, just challenging notions and censorship is an artistic statement (add in the fact that many are actually very talented too). These ideas are often blurred or obscured because the artists medium is so cringe inducing or illicit. Add in the fact that the genre is so esoteric and niche people who ‘don’t get it’ won’t see value even in the good stuff.
Of course those who ‘get it’ and those that don’t are neither right no wrong. Hope this helps.
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Off topic, but one thing I like about Allan is his ability to see value in something like this and say ‘Singing in the Rain’, most film buffs can’t (and I’m guilty of seeing little value in the ‘Singing in the Rains’ of the world).
I have a working synopsis for this film in my head (alas), so I am not surprised by what you say above. At the same time, I will await your more considered views.
Just one other thought to throw out there and it is addressed to no one in particular… I push on the intellectual side of things above. However, is it a passable defence of an extreme film such as this to simply say that you get a kick out of watching such works even if the content sickens you? In other words, as utterly revolting as it may be, can a film like this still simply be entertainment (and nothing but entertainment) for people who are otherwise non-violent, grounded folks who enjoy orthodox sex lives?
Yes, I thought that was understood by all! lol.
I do like these films for entertainment, but I’m not usually in the company of people as open-minded as Allan and yourself… you can’t really tell strangers you like this type of stuff!
“orthodox sex lives”, there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one… lol.
Wow, I missed this film and this thread till now. A fascinating discussion on everyone’s parts. I like that both Jamie and Bobby J speak their minds – completely divergently, but articulately. That’s one thing I love about the crowd on this site; you get all viewpoints.
Somehow or another (it’s not on Netflix) I will see this film. Allan, this is one of your all-time best reviews, great opening paragraph and fascinating discussion of your reaction without giving away much of anything about the movie (which I knew nothing about before reading this).
I find one thing that “bothers” me about “extreme” films is not my virulent reaction, but my lack thereof. Something in me shuts off at a certain point and I watch with intellectual revulsion, but am numbed to a visceral one. Salo and Come and See (I know, that latter’s not really what anyone would classify as an “extreme” film but it’s still sort of part of the phenomenon I’m talking about) are examples. I put myself on the “show” side recently in a discussion with Jamie, but this is one area (extreme violence/brutality) where, for me personally, not showing is sometimes more powerful – confronted with the showing my mind goes a bit blank. Yet something draws me to the films anyway like a moth to the flame – so I will see this and find out what I think, or more accurately, feel.
“Off topic, but one thing I like about Allan is his ability to see value in something like this and say ‘Singing in the Rain’,”
Yes I agree totally – this is probably the quality above all others which drew me to his countdown, its diversity (not just in terms of the kinds of films but in terms of obscurity vs. well-known classics, he included both just as I would hope to do in my own personal canon). To me cinema is an “all of the above” type of matter and I love the width of Allan’s embrace – however tentatively he stretches out that arm to include A Serbian Film!
it’s not on netflix Joel as it’s not on DVD yet. How Allan got a copy I’ll never tell (even if I get tortured like a few in this film…)
Ah, there’s hope then (I did see it was “Saved” on the site, but I’ve also seen DVDs in that status for years so who knows…)
there are rumors out there though that if/when it hits the states it’ll be highly censored (to bobby’s approval no doubt) and not the film Allan is reviewing here.
After reading the despicable content involved in this film I almost want to be the guy with the scissors snipping away. Of course I am opposed to censorship so even this highly controversial movie deserves to be released as the artist intended. I will say though that most reviews I have read pertaining to this film so disturb the viewer that the political message implied gets lost in the perverse graphic content. I commend any artist that tries to take a stand against government corruption and atrocities. I just wonder if maybe all those high minded concepts are just a ruse to show some crazy shit to titillate people that get off on Three Guys And A Hammer and Faces Of Death. I won’t judge other people’s idea of entertainment but I have zero interest personally.
Maurizio, I wish I had a Delorean so you and I could go back in time so you could say the exact same stuff about SALO. Which is generally considered art now, sometimes it takes the gentler tastes of the masses a little longer to catch up.
I’m not a fan of that particular Paosolini either. No Delorean needed lol.