We want the fiddle!

In the words of one of the lesser-known semi-hits of the Pet Shop Boys duo - "Happiness is an option", that is, happiness is one of the options, and this quick-moving doctrine applied to our real lives and everyday life can be interpreted in the following way: there is room for happy outcomes, at least in the depth of the "narrative frames" of our reality, of course, if we understand popular culture as an integral part of the existence of a community, and then also as a valid consolation for what what we face and carry from day to day. More specifically: a new Serbian feature film arrived in regular cinema distribution last weekend Son's will directed by Nemanja Ćeranić, and as the years went by, it seemed that there was less and less hope for that brave young film that started back in 2017, but here it is, it survived all the turbulence on the way to the audience, including several years of production coma/hibernation, and then the death of Žarko Laušević, the performer of one of the more impressive roles in the material recorded at the time. In the meantime, in a significant number of cases, viewers fell in love again with escapism (and in our country - of the retro chic subtype) as a key component of the film story of the cinema's "size".

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Admittedly, there is also some escapism Son's will, which, as kismet so pleased, came as the third film directed by the young Ćeranić (after quite different achievements Moneylender i Sunday), and not the first, as originally planned; escapism Son's will of course, it belongs to a completely different genre - let's remind you, it is about a dystopian story in the local/Serbian context, in which everyone tries to escape from fate, perhaps equally cruel to all actors and, in the long run, even to those who who occupy the very top of the social hierarchy of that strictly coded and even caste system, created on the ruins, let's assume ours now (the disaster was caused by acid rains, the consequences pollution, and since a good part of the film was shot on tailings and wastelands, it is easy to recognize or maybe just load the reference). Don't be confused, Son's will it is a lot, there is quite a bit of stylistic, genre and intra-genre, and expressive colorfulness in it, but it is certainly not a dark environmental story. After all, how does that whole subgenre teach us (if we take Miller's as a rapper Mad Max or Sarafijan's Interzone, Marshall Judgement Day, and perhaps also some of the numerous epigonal titles from previous eras of the film industry), ecological ruin is always and necessarily just a given, a necessary predisposition to create a clear and vivid framework for new attempts at the story of darkness in human souls, which especially comes to the fore when the already porous and questionable disguise of civilizational staging and life in more or less evident comfort falls to pieces.

The synopsis itself Son's will it is widely and quickly available anyway, so let's highlight only the most basic - Ćeranić and screenwriter Strahinja Madžarević here reached for the tried and tested settings of the subgenre, and at the heart of their story we follow the conflicts of bloody factions, with an emphasis on the attempts of a younger, fearless and self-effacing hero to recover the saber that fate determined him to be her guardian (and then maybe also an occasional user). In this regard, Son's will from beginning to end follows a path that many others have followed (especially in the planetary framework, because dystopia was not represented in the film in our country, if we invent an extravaganza of a completely different direction - the film Beautiful women pass through the city Želimir Žilnik or excessive outbursts of pretentiousness like justly forgotten achievements What a strange country i Athos Gardens). Conflicts, i.e. compressed wars and fights to the point of extermination, in this Frisian film are part of a wider genre architectonics, and in the ideological sense they have their roots in the universally understandable premise that war (of this or that scope, of this or that goal) is at the core of the human being, in any case extremely phallic. nature, of which the actors are Son's will, is well aware of that sufficiently convincing dystopian Eastern. War is a certainty, peace is an elusive goal.

Son's will it requires a certain audience refinement and prior knowledge of the genre, but also of the self-chosen aesthetics in which this and that story is wrapped, and it will be interesting to see how the wider audience will do, including the rather numerous ones - random viewers from multiplex cinemas in shopping centers , react to that peculiarity. Therefore, let's clarify that Nemanja Ćeranić undeniably strives for a genre experience and "packaging" of the film story, but this genre film is well imbued with an influx of arthouse self-awareness. In this regard, if it has already been mentioned Moneylender was a tribute to the "handwriting" of young Walter Hill, and then Nicolas Winding Refn, Son's will could be brought into a "sisterly" relationship with the manner in which, for example, Anna Lily Amirpour, the director of notable achievements The girl returns home alone, at night, The Bad Batch i Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, combines the indisputable genre consistency on the one hand, and the arthouse peculiarity and palpability on the other hand of those quite unnecessarily conflicting and questionable contradictions of contemporary film. If it is necessary to further specify, let it be pointed out that it was just mentioned The Bad Batch, and not only on account of the dystopian common content, the most natural counterpart to the approach that Nemanja Ćeranić chose and presented for inspection and evaluation with his first, and actually third, film.

Son's will is the work and fruit of extensive and thorough aestheticization, and it is good that it is so, because it is precisely there, at that demanding and ambitiously set height, that the key apartness of this film in relation to the greater part of today's Serbian cinematography, which persistently moves within the boundaries of uninspiring naturalism, dramedy as heavy genre bookage and filming solutions that stop at the point of merely recording events with a low-intensity technique known as plan-contraplan. In that sense, Son's will is a striking sight of wildness and immoderation, which, however, luckily stops in time - before it steps on the ground of barren and excessive swagger. This is a film that, in terms of aesthetics, and in the dimension of production ambition, is really difficult to mix with any other film that comes from these or nearby addresses, where this aestheticization has a valid and convincing foundation in the story itself, sufficiently thoughtfully connected with the local epic and at the same time macho and melancholic storytelling tradition of songs about great, inexorable conflicts and perils, without which there is neither nor can there be some kind of success on the way to a new victory, and perhaps to the next series of defeats (hence, all the opportunity, and the motive of the blind fiddler, certainly knowledgeable about the events in all episodes of the fight to extermination, perhaps all of them and at any cost).

And the trouble with Son's will it results from the already mentioned - subsequent "grafting" and deconstruction of the initial story, and this time too we get the impression that the film before us was created from a wider material. Admittedly, this production clearly shows more ambition to cover up and heal those cuts and seams, but despite that, the very rhythm of the narration, that always too deceptive and sensitive element, suffers at times. A more sweeping use of flashbacks is always a debatable intervention when on the other hand, a more uniform and more "organic" rhythm of the entire story is found as a common sense goal, and the repetitiveness of the segment with the fiddler and his young companion in a tavern full of hostile listeners quickly falls into the manner. On the other hand, fortunately, we have sincere and focused efforts to tell this digressive-episodic story as articulately and transparently as possible, then another top-notch cinematography work by Igor Marović, whose cinematography is dynamic, rich in values ​​and nuances, but also full of events in the second plan or depth of shot, as well as skilfully choreographed, staged and evenly positioned action segments within the story, and a coordinated acting ensemble, in which were shown the most by Igor Benčina, who has long been a clear and indisputable future and steady strength of the Serbian male film actor, Marta Bjelica, on the precise track of the genre expression most reminiscent of the nature of this story, and the very young Ivan Vujić (seen earlier in films King Peter the First i storm).

What is perhaps most significant here - of course, with the suspension of disbelief (necessary when watching a dystopia in the context of a contemporary Serbian film), Ćeranić, Madžarević and the rest of the team here have created something that they clearly understand and feel; at the same time, a striking illusion of the world that is shown there was created, in which a story like this is possible and, let's say it again, organically given and marketed. That is quite enough for a film which, apart from its shortcomings for which the audience may or may not have a special understanding, has the potential to initiate a much-needed revival in Serbian cinema today, in the sense that authors dare to dream more persistently and to they imagine worlds, even if they are strikingly far from typical and tried and tested. On that track, and with just a pinch of already restrained fan fervor that follows anyone who shows ambition and determination (and that in Son's will has a lot going on), this film reaches a four as a tentative rating for what is shown (of course, on a scale of 1 to 5).