|
"A love film." No use for old magic, declares "the youngest hypnotist in the Balkans," the mesmerized fellow flapping his arms like wings is a modern specimen. Drudgery and sex and all the connections in between, the industrial hamlet in the mountains provides the ideal canvas. Dour, middle-aged foreman (Janez Vrhovec) meets younger, vibrant hairdresser (Milena Dravić), his inspection of heavy machinery is intercut with her bare figure smiling on a fuzzy black blanket. "Your frivolity will be the death of you one day." "And your seriousness will be the death of you." The lumpen laborer (Stole Aranđelović) toils in the pit and terrorizes the missus (Eva Ras) at home, just one facet in an order erected on cycles of power and powerlessness. (The wife claws at her rival while her husband confirms his abusive rights, finally she breaks free, "no more hypnotism.") Nothing beats Dusan Makavejev for frankness and bounce in handheld blurs of documentary and narrative, labor and management, men and women. "You only got two hands," a billboard of giant palms raised in solidarity turns out to be a backdrop for the comrades' bonus, a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the copper factory. (Lost in the industrial depths, members of the philharmonic choir stumble underneath a shower of metallurgical sparks.) "Ode to Joy" while the blonde romps with the sexy trucker (Boris Dvornik), a shuddering montage between communal spectacle and private pleasure building to an ejaculatory hose on a windshield and thunderous applause. Cracked mirror and cracked mud flats, serpents for breakfast at the existential circus. "Something funny tickle your fanny?" Altman in Brewster McCloud has his own avian allegories to hatch. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |