A Serbian Film is pretty shitty. The actual footage is, given its genre, pretty good, but the political background of the film makes it an achievement in artistic hypocrisy that it is a shame. Granted, we are all hypocrites in our own ways, but the director of this one is a winner.
Politiwhat?
I may have missed out here, but I saw this movie purely as - just a movie, about a guy, his wife, his son, and then things got pretty fuckin dark...
It's supposedly an allegory for the plight of Serbian people - "fucked from birth to death". Granted, people from the Balkans have got it pretty bad but that's still a weak excuse to produce a shock flick just for the sake of generating controversy, but that's how the makers chose to spin it.
Actually, the point of "fucked from birth to death" was okay for me - it was fitting in a certain context, but it was an weak excuse. It's also supposed to be used as an metaphor for a Serbian cinematography in general - where under-appreciated, but talented people (represented by actor) are fucked over by those in power (director), a power which could be pure monetary, political or else - therefore the basic name of the film, it is an allegory for a typical Serbian film, as well as a typical sitation in this shithole of a country.
The issue here is that the director of A Serbian Film is a dude who, during the '90s, arguably the worst period to live in Balkans, was living and studying away - in England, I believe, though I could be wrong about the exact country. In any case, he wasn't in Serbia at the time. Now, people who are slightly better informed will know that regular people in Serbia, especially in '93, barely had money for water, soap and bread (I'm not exaggerating), so how did this dude have enough money to study in other country? Easily. His dear daddy was involved with the corrupted and fucked up regime of the period and had enough financial support to fund his son's studies and dreams. Nothing wrong with supporting your own kid's education, I applaud to that, but what you have here is basically blood money...
The actual issue here is that, 15 or so years later, this guy suddenly comes back as a prophetic messiah of cinematography enlightenment, giving us an allegorical horror flick that is supposed to open eyes of each and every one of us, portraying the country whose worst years he actually hadn't seen and who has enough audacity to take up a critical stance given his background - in essence, the director is right, but it is pure hypocrisy nonetheless.
What I'm basically giving here is an ad hominem argument, but irregardless, I find this film offensive because of that. If it were titled differently and had no "look how smart we are, look our metaphor" stance to it, it would've been a cool horror film. This way, fuck it. It got people offended, sure, but in a completely wrong way.
In reality though, most people in Serbia are unaware of this film's existence, and those who are don't give a fuck about it. There are much bigger and more pressing problems which surround us everyday for us to give a shit about something as ridiculous as this.
