The un-hero

During the latter half of the twentieth century Serbia had been one of the leading global centers of movie production. Not in terms the market would acknowledge - quantity or popularity, or global sales figures - but by the power of their visions, the capacity to condense the state of the world into a few hours of film. Emir Kusturica has gained some international acclaim (winning the Palme d'or twice, for When father was away on business and Underground, and then there is Do you remember Dolly Bell, arguably his best movie, and of course Time of the Gypsies), but does he measure up to the greats of earlier generations? Not really. One needs only to take a look at Dušan Makavejev's early feature length films like Čovek nije tica, Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice PTT and Misterije organizma, or Saša Petrović's masterpieces Skupljači Perja and Tri. And then in the comedy department there is Paskaljević's Varljivo leto 68 and Kovačević's Balkanski Špijun (before Underground was an award winning movie, it was a play by Kovačević, who has also co-written the script for the movie together with Kusturica) and so so many more.

If I were forced to make an impossible choice and pick one I thought was the best, I would go with Tri. But before I focus on it I will solve the mystery of the title: tri is the serbian word (or number?) for three. The title is fitting since we are presented with three stories, containing one violent death each (adding up to three deaths in all). The first story is from the beginning of World war II, the second from the middle, the last happens toward the end. The connection between them is established by the protagonist, who acts as witness in all three cases.

Luckily someone took the time to upload the whole movie on Youtube, here is the first part, I'm sure you'll find your way after that:



Now that the mystery of the movie title is solved, how about the title of this post? The un-hero acts as witness to the three deaths and little more. What is happening in the movie happens around him, never through him or even to him. In Minima Moralia Adorno claimed that all attempts to turn the horror of the war into drama are doomed to failure, since what happened was far beyond the subject, beyond the subject's ability to act and beyond the subject's ability to comprehend. The catastrophe was objective, hence impossible to translate into actions of subjects, on which drama must rely. I don't know if Petrović has read Adorno, but he certainly solved his paradox: if the war can not be understood through actions of subjects, well then my protagonist will not act. Petrović took the camera and pointed it at the paradox itself. The un-hero (I don't believe he even has a name) is faced three times with his inability to act, to change the course of events, to save a life. The movie brilliantly subverts the expectations of the audience. We can not identify with the un-hero, not because he is alien to us, but because he is us. He does not convey to us his frustration, his feeling of powerlessness, we feel them first hand with him. We are watching events unfold on screen, unable to interfere with them, and so is he, telling us that the subject has become so hollowed out that his capacity to act has been reduced to acting as a silent witness to the course of the world.