A Serbian Film

 

 

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That is how the director Srdjan Spasojevic, describes this film. I really do beg to differ. It is an horrific, cruel polemic on the state of modern life and more accurately Serbia.

He uses pornography and non consensual sex - ie rape, as a vehicle for how low society has become. This is after the horrors visited on his country by two decades of conflict. As others have said this should not have been cut, as censorship is wrong in my opinion, we are able to make our own decisions without the `Nanny State' stepping in to say what is good for us. That said I do not feel that more scenes of apparently gratuitous violence, sexual or otherwise would have helped to ram the message home any more than it needed to be.

The plot is that of a semi retired porn star who gets offered `a life changing' sum to make an unscripted porno for an eccentric `artist'. The catch is that he must do as directed at the drop of a hat, and be able to perform, no matter what the circumstances. Those circumstances become increasingly challenging, but there are hints throughout, of what the `director' is looking for, like when he says "victims sell the most".

I think anyone would be hard pushed to say they `like' this film, but whether or not it has merit as a satire or otherwise will be a very personal choice. I admire film makers for pushing the boundaries, and this certainly does that. It was not a happy viewing experience, but then it was never meant to be, so from that reasoning it is a `good' film. It will just not be to everybody's liking, and if you are unsure there is a very good synopsis on Wikipedia, but it contains plot spoilers. Even having read that, I still was shocked and was left feeling quite down after this I remember thinking it was `belligerently dystopian', when in fact that is what it was saying about society. A film that shocks, makes you think and asks questions - all in all a very good effort, but watch with caution.

Even with the few cuts this film is seriously brutal. Without trying to spoil anything... a scene involving a 'new kind of porn' is made even more chilling by cutting the bad visual prop of what is obviously happening. However, one particular cut to the devastatingly cruel finale is unfortunate. It's still obvious what's happening and to whom, but by cutting the actual 'reveal', the impact isn't quite as soul-shattering. Any other minor cuts to particularly graphic scenes are baffling. Some commonly seen things are edited, while other nastiness is untouched. Anyway, when all is said and done, you can't unwatch a movie.

Let's get this straight.
This film is not a porno,
nor does it overtly critique the porn industry.
It accuses multinational corporations,
and mainstream news media, for their parts in creating and
then covering-up war crimes,
and if you do not know what this means
see one of the greatest books of the century,
Newspeak in the 21st Century, by MediaLens and David Cromwell (the US Amazon site blocks my attempt to put this product link in ..at least the the Canadian and British sites still allow it... but for how much longer? Well worth a read!

Every day we see images that are much much more shocking - because they are real images of real people suffering, on TV news - than anything in this film. Turn off mainstream corporate TV news if you want to censor something that is really sick, but do not censor this film. Whether or not you can face watching a film that, to all intents and purposes is less shocking than "I Spit On Your Grave" was in its day, do not let the hype put you off, nor the frenzied hatred that has been invoked in those who utter such bile in their rabid attempts to stop you from seeing this.

This film points a finger at the war-mad corporate machine that drives governments, and that is backed-up by its own (well-controlled and out on a leash) mainstream media, that lives off the endless death, carnage and suffering perpetrated on millions of innocents (e.g. to date over 1 million dead in Iraq since 2003) to feed the hunger that brings back the viewer, time and time. for more so-called 'news', filtered information that is propagandized by TV corporate cartels who decide what is and what is not the news that you will see. You don't believe that?
Then check out
Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09or any of the other books by that title, one of which is issued every year, and has been for the last 30 years. Every year you will find would-be block-buster news stories that were simply 'blocked' by mainstream news, the few with all the broadcasting power.

If you think that sounds crazy please see this website for
MUST-SEE films, really great flix of our age,
that are quietly "banned"
by corporate media
and blanked by the multinational news cartel:[...]

"A Serbian Film" plays with an extreme, yet an imagined part of the world of porn, the so-called 'snuff' movie, a mythical & invisible pillar in the darkest heart of the temple of pornography (where, supposedly, some unfortunate porn stars have been lured to meet their fate ... for the 'exquisite' delectation of a select few super-addicts who can no longer get satisfaction from plain old sex on the screen. No snuff movie has ever been proved to have existed but it is a useful and scary tool in showing how state-sponsored terror often ignores the rule of International law(let alone common decency) and bombs or attacks countries to preempt ... "a smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud" (as war criminal C.Rice put it); or to 'protect' the poor and defenseless natives (by killing other poor and defenseless natives) and then lets its news cameras in to film the aftermath, the shoe in the rubble, the bloodbath in the sand, the severed bits'n'pieces under makeshift blankets; and the real pain and anguish or survivors and loved ones, all for a strange visual pleasure, for the consumption of 'news' over dinner, or on the move - watch it on the way to work on BBCiplayer - and reassurance of the public that protection is available, at a price.

This film is not a film that abuses minors; nor does it espouse child abuse - no more than Stanley Kubrick did in "The Shining". No one in their right mind would say "The Shining" was abusive to minors, though it places youngsters like the twin girls aside gushing torrents of blood; and it puts Danny (and 'Tony', 'the little boy who lives in his mouth') in stark view of the blood that gushes when the axe-wielding maniac protagonist chops-up chef Halloran, and threatens to do the same to his son, as he chases Danny from the bathroom to the snow-covered maze.
"A Serbian Film" is attacked by censors because it shows a child - dressed and doing absolutely nothing to do with sex - on a television screen, whilst unsavory acts are happening in the room where the TV is situated! The denouement and other scenes involving children are not explicit, and certainly not abusive, however, they are shocking to the viewer, as they are meant to be. Compared to what Danny went through in "The Shining", nearly 40 years ago, the kids who act in this film are surly guaranteed to come out of it with less mental scarring than the poor lad who played "Danny" did. They are seen acting upset and shocked, yes, that much is true, though they are not subject to sexual abuse or used in scenes where difficult scenes are acted out. Remember that thing called editing? Editing often gives us a different impression but that's all it is. Editing can associate a sea-horse with "The Grand National" horse-race but it does not mean the little marine creature actually raced there.

This film attacks the pornographic pointing of mainstream news lenses; the invasion of places and lives where those cameras were not welcome, where they should not be; places where, because they are present, propaganda and manipulation become possible.

Serbia - and Yugoslavia before it - was one of the first, modern-day, European victims of a neo-fascism that has been on the rise in governments in the west since the days of Presidential-usurper L.B.J. (upon whom Jackie Kennedy recently was heard to lay blame, for the assassination of JFK - fact : her tapes were just released, mid-August 2011).
The end of Yugoslavia and what happened between the warring parts (no sides taken by this reviewer) and the other people there (the majority, i.e. the non-combatants), is at the cutting edge of this film's visor; seen through the lens that spies-out a family that had thought it had managed to 'retire' from the dangers of the world. It reminded me of the protagonist's family in Michael Mann's Manhunter [DVD] [1989]: a man, his wife and their child; he is trying to get over his past occupation and infamy - as a John Holmesesque porn star - for the sake of the unity of his family. His wife is fully understanding, intelligent and loving; and they have a dream kid.
The family has just about survived being 'bought and sold' by the sex industry; dad has chewed-up and spat out just about every porn starlet on video, and his shelf-top collection of his old porn movies demonstrates so. He is soon lured, once more, by the hard cash of the porn set, but this time he is contracted, unknown to him, by a snuff movie cartel that reaches to the highest (and lowest levels). This cryptocracy of snuff-movie producers, played by darkly attired, heavily 'weaponized' "Blackwater" lookalikes (that post-war lot, now called "Xe", who work for neo-conservative governments in the west) who employ a legion of 'terminators', young, fit and muscle-bound dudes in black with big ... movie cameras! These Steven Segal types look like NSA Black Opz boys from the darkest of CIA lists (like that one from c.1997, known simply as "Al Qaeda" ... when that name represented little more than a list of CIA-backed fanatics carrying guns into mercenary arenas of slaughter) from where Sarah Palin might have liked to have drawn her front-line fodder; the kind of dudes she wanted to use to execute Julian Assange, for example. Terminators set loose, in the pay of very high echelons within the global corporate cartel.

Without plot-spoiling, at the start think ... "Resident Evil", the above ground scenes at Umbrella Corp., at the moment of the shut-down; think ... "Memento", think waking-up and wondering where all the blood came from, the back-tracking, re-tracing your steps, this time with the aid of discarded video camcorders and tapes - which show you shocking and graphic depictions of you, yourself, over the last three days; a time you cannot remember...a time you do not want to remember!

In the opinion of this reviewer, "A Serbian Film" is a lot less shocking than some current offerings that have gone unscathed by the reactionary fury that has hammered this film. For example, there is the recent French horror film, "Martyrs". It is a lot harder to watch. It's about inflicting as much pain as possible on a person, whilst keeping them alive, so as to achieve a modern martyrdom, after a year or more of intense suffering, to briefly 'see' what lies beyond death, and to impart that news to the corporate-like cult that has induced the endless agonies - before the poor victims are finally, thankfully dying. "A Serbian Film" is not easy viewing but it is not showing pain for pleasure's sake. It does not show the skinning of a a living girl by religious fanatics, as "Martyrs" does. It is a stark commentary on what is happening today, not just to Serbia and other post-war Balkan states, but to Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria; and in Saudia Arabia, to name but a few!

Warning: this is not for the faint-hearted. There is plenty of blood and a lot of sexual violence, against men as well as women.
Get past your conditioning and you'll see it as a masterpiece.

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