Cast: Nebojsa Glogovac, Miki Manojlovic, Marko Urosevic, Bogdan Diklic, Dragan Nikolic, Danilo 'Bata' Stojkovic, Aleksandar Bercek, Voja Brajovic, Mirjana Jokovic
Director: Goran Paskaljevic
Producer: Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre
Screenplay: Dejan Dukovski & Goran Paskaljevic and Filip David & Zoran Andric, based on the play by Dejan Dukovski
Cinematography: Milan Spasic
Music: Zoran Simjanovic
U.S. Distributor: Paramount Classics
When we sit in a house or an apartment watching video footage on the six o'clock news, the events half a world away seem remote and almost unreal. Their lack of substantiality causes them to be forgotten as soon as they are off the screen. The deaths of a handful of teenagers at a high school in suburban Denver obsessed this nation for weeks, but the murders of thousands in the Balkans is treated as little more than an historical footnote. We throw around terms like "ethnic cleansing" and "war crimes" with little thought for the harsh realities that underlie the words. It takes a movie like Goran Paskaljevic's Cabaret Balkan to bring home the truth of what is transpiring in the part of the world formerly known as Yugloslavia.
During the 1990s, there have been numerous motion pictures from that corner of the globe, and all have shared the traits of being devastatingly powerful and almost impossible to watch. Vukovar. Pretty Village, Pretty Flame. The Wounds. Welcome to Sarajevo. Cabaret Balkan. Those are a few of the titles, and only the most devout movie-goers will recognize them. The majority of ticket buyers go to theaters to escape the real world, but these films bring us face-to-face with the deepest, darkest ugliness that civilization has to offer. Anyone who attends a movie named Cabaret Balkan without expecting the cinematic equivalent of a blow to the solar plexus is naïve.
This film's purpose is to illustrate what happens when a pocket of civilization collapses. Cabaret Balkan features a collage of stories that take place during the course of one night in Belgrade. Law and order have broken down. The streets are teeming with police, but they don't act, and, when they do, they are ineffectual. In fact, the cops are as much a part of the problem as the solution. Their job is no longer about honoring a meaningless term like justice; their purpose is to mete out punishment. Violence is no longer a regrettable tool; it is a pleasure.
Everyone in Belgrade realizes the horror that their city has become. A cab driver remarks to a fare that in any other city he would not be a smoker because smoking kills. But here, it doesn't matter because "everything kills." Later, a crippled police officer is explaining to the cab driver what happened to him when he was ambushed - 27 bones fractured, every rib broken, one kidney removed and the other working only part of the time. "They put me back together, but not very well." To this, the taxi driver has a shocking response. Later, another character remarks that "Death is beautiful and the world is absurd." A hardened criminal makes the following comment to his new accomplice: "Whatever you've heard about this place, it's much worse... Everyone wants to get out." He goes on to describe Belgrade as the world's bloody hemorrhoid. Images don't get more explicit than that.
During the course of Cabaret Balkan, we are introduced to more than a dozen characters, many of whom are only on screen for ten minutes or so. We drift in and out of their lives, moving from one story to another, each more distressing than the last. We see acts of violence, sexual violation, and irrational rage. And there's always the sense that the perpetrator one moment might become the victim the next. Power is transitory; when someone has it, he uses it before it falls into another's hands.
Cabaret Balkan is so named because it is structured like a cabaret, complete with a master of ceremonies who is as creepy as Joel Grey. He speaks of Belgrade's woes, tells horrifying stories, and makes jokes of the bleakest sort imaginable. He is Cabaret Balkan's Greek chorus, offering acid comments on everything from the political situation to the folly of not fleeing the area. The film is not narrative-driven; it jumps from scene to scene almost randomly, giving us glimpses into a world that most of us would prefer to pretend does not exist. We don't find out the ending of many of the mini-dramas laid out before the cameras. On those occasions when we do, it's usually because the temporary protagonist is killed. This happens more than once.
Nearly 30 years ago, Stanley Kubrick shocked the world with A Clockwork Orange - a futuristic look at what happens when the rules and morality governing human society collapse. Cabaret Balkan recalls Kubrick's vision with one critical difference - this is no longer a fantasy; it is reality. Throughout the movie, there is a palpable sense that violence could erupt at any moment. By the end, we expect it at every possible instance, and we're usually right.
Four particular segments stick in my mind. The first involves the conversation between the taxi driver and the cop. During this sequence, much is revealed about the role of the police in the current calamity. The second is the physical and emotional interaction between two boxing partners whose dangerous game of revealing past betrayals opens too many wounds. Thirdly, a disillusioned youth holds an entire bus hostage with only a small knife and a stream of volatile words. Finally, a tragic case of mistaken identity brings mob retribution down upon the wrong person. But "innocent" is not a word to describe him, since he has recently participated in the terrorization of a young woman and her boyfriend.
The cumulative effect of the scenarios presented in this film is to leave the viewer dazed and perhaps a little disoriented. Cabaret Balkan shocks its audience into considering things that most of us are willfully ignorant of. Director Goran Paskaljevic's motives are straightforward: he wants to show the world the depth of senselessness that is tearing his homeland apart. (Incidentally, Paskaljevic's previous feature, Someone Else's America, examined a different subject - the immigrant's experience in the United States.) The film has connected with audiences worldwide, resulting in Cabaret Balkan becoming a much-honored entry on the international film festival circuit.
Are the Balkans really as far away as the evening news would lead us to believe? The cultural specifics are surely different, but human nature is the same all over the world. Could this sort of thing happen here? 20 years ago, the men and women of Yugoslavia would have answered "no" to that very question. Yet the riots in Los Angeles argue what can happen when the blue touch paper is lit. Cabaret Balkan isn't just an autopsy of Belgrade's disintegration; it's a cautionary tale. The message is the same one Kubrick presented in A Clockwork Orange, but the tone is more immediate and the implications are more dire.
© 1999 James Berardinelli