Tudjman the speech at the Knin Fortress every year, during the anniversary of the "Storm", presents a sad picture of the great national tragedy of the Serbs in Croatia. Another part of this picture is the columns of tractors on the way to Serbia, whose warlords promised to save their people.
"Somebody has to...", says one of the most impressive characters in the series Fortress, a retired policeman, a Serb, masterfully portrayed by Jovo Maksić. This sentence is simultaneously declarative, interrogative and negative, depending on whether you say it in 1991 or 1995, in the historical convoy to Of Serbia via Sremska Rača.
We're halfway through the series, which airs on weekends on RTS, whose authors are Mirko Stojković and Goran Starčević, director Saša Hajduković, and producer Miloš Avramović and the company "Režim". A metaphor Fortresses it is wider than Knin, because it can be a symbol of a family, a love relationship between a Serb and a Croat at the dawn of war, or a guardian of the nation, religion and culture in an area where orthodoxy is measured by the firmness of attitudes or, in the worst case, by the amount of mutual hatred.
The best part of the series is precisely the story about the family, because everything is hyperrealistically precise, like in family photos from Krajina. The acting of Ognjen Mićović and Daria Vučko (Serb and Croat, Romeo and Juliet) is bravura and sincere, and perhaps even more so by Jovo Maksić, Nikolina Friganović (father and mother), Nikola Pejaković (uncle) and the demonic security guard, Ljubomir Bandović.
The city of Nikšić was played by Knin, and the scenography and costumes are a painfully realistic reminder of the "happy nineties" that will make you laugh to tears - as they say in bad commercials.
It's been 30 years since Dayton, since “Storm”, and in the Krajina and Dalmatia today the descendants of those who left are leaving, all in search of pieces of memories and emotions, which they find in the burning grounds and overgrown vineyards and orchards.
A tragedy like "The Storm" has already been screened in the series of the same name, which actually showed the military aspect, the tragedy in the convoy, the fight for life, more like the manner of partisan films. Large transport or Battle of the Neretva. This series is the most convincing in the description of the atmosphere, the ignoring of the coming war, the tragic indifference with which a generation defended itself from the thought of new bloodshed. It describes the hypocritical brotherhood and unity, the delusions of party believers, the beginning of quasi-democracy, the transition, the robbery and the transformation of yesterday's communists into believers and saviors of the nation. Anyone who remembers the 90s will feel this realism viscerally, as it will tie your stomach in knots and bring back memories you suppressed long ago.
We also got a new archetypal film villain, like the legendary Šicer, and that is Udbaš Dilparić, in which Ljuba Bandović sublimated that post-communist-Udbaš heart of darkness that turns from a smile into a state of absolute power in a second. That socialist darkness became a democratic darkness or a national darkness - in short, an eternal darkness from which we have not gotten rid of.
This story is told personally and bravely because it was necessary to face our own personal and collective delusions. My generation was not interested in politics until they beat us on the head, put us in uniforms and sent us to war. You had the opportunity to recognize where the disintegration of Yugoslavia is leading and escape from evil. That decision was not easy or cheap either, because you left behind your previous life, family and friends. Very soon, there was no choice. The authors also showed the fate of the Croats who remained in Knin and Krajina, a fate that was also tragic, just like the immature political puppets in Krajina, where the leaders were former policemen and warehouse workers.
Those who dared to think for themselves or oppose Milosevic usually lost their heads. The mechanisms of robbery, smuggling and enrichment of criminals and politicians under the blessing of the secret service are also shown in detail. Let's not forget, the fall of Krajina and the war in Bosnia created our war rich people, future respectable businessmen.
That's actually where my reservation about this series lies. While the tragedy of the family is striking and authentic, painfully realistic, the political, military and security part of the facts is romanticized and stylized. We know very well that Martić, Babić, Hadžić, but also Frenki, Jovica, Captain Dragan, Arkan, Legija, Šešelj, while Milošević sent directives from Belgrade.
It's been a long time since we watched the screenplay of the nineties in movies Beautiful Village, Pretty Flame, Vukovar, one story or wounds. An example of this stylization is, for example, the story of the murder of Zoran Đinđić, which you can see in the series Klan i Saber. It is incredible that 30 years after the events in Serbia, you are not allowed to openly name your characters. Imagine that in 1975 you were shooting a film about the war and called Draž Grandfather, Pavelić - Uncle, and Tito - Walter.
What is actually the scariest realization for me since the first episode of this series is the fact that all the characters from the political scene are still in power in Serbia today. Today, all those Dilparians are still there, rattling their weapons, spreading hatred towards their neighbors, 30 years after Dayton and the "Storm", the hatred is even stronger. No one is responsible for the tragedy of those people who arrived in Serbia from Tvrđava during the "Storm" and are only used as voting machines. Neither in Croatia nor in Serbia is there any help to rebuild what has been burned and demolished, but the authorities are just counting the dead. Today there is a Museum of the Homeland War in the fortress in Knin, and as one of the characters from the series said Fortress, for more than three decades only one commodity has been sold here - war!
In this trade, ordinary people suffer, who pay the price of naivety with their life tragedies, while the sellers do not lack anything, you are not even allowed to mention their names. And the goods still go for nothing today.
