Take Me Somewhere Nice [2019)

Sara Luna Zorić.

The world is fucked up.

For two years we fought against medical tyranny.

We fought against killer vaccines.

And suddenly the narrative changed.

Completely.

The plandemic/scamdemic wiped out.

Like chalk off a blackboard.

This is a flawed masterpiece.

Like the dent in Sara Luna Zorić’s forehead.

This film is a masterpiece.

This film is an utter masterpiece.

And it is carried by Sara Luna Zorić’s breasts.

And legs.

And scowl.

And sadness.

And dented forehead.

This film is a masterpiece.

It ends like Pierrot le fou, in some ways.

It ends like Contempt.

It ends like Ghost World.

So can I be in love with Sara Luna Zorić now?

Yes.

Because the world is shit.

We must pick sides.

I pick Russia.

Fuck Ukraine.

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There is not a more propagandistic website on Earth than Drudge Report.

Screen Shot 2022-03-05 at 4.32.23 AM

Do you know what propaganda looks like?

“Putin doesn’t want his people to see images of the war.”

“Russian Air Force incapable of complex military operations (invasion failing).”

“Zelensky is the reincarnation of Rasputin.”

“Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women.”

“Russia [who secured both Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia] are nuclear ‘terrorists'”. [For securing the facilities. All while the facilities are undamaged and not showing a rise in radiation leakage.]

“Russia is planning public executions.”

Might as well throw in some chestnut like “Russia shish-kebabbing Ukrainian infants on bayonets”.

Do you see where this is going?

“Two more top Russian commanders kiled.”

DO YOU BELIEVE ANY OF THIS BULLSHIT???

The same media that lied to you for two years about COVID and masks and vaccines and lab leaks now wants you to TRUST THEM and #StandWithUkraine .

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKK THAT!

What are the possibilities that Putin is beholden to Klaus Schwab?

I’d say 1%.

What is the possibility that Putin is doing the right thing.

I’d say 99%.

But the only problem is this: it completely overshadows the exceedingly-successful “freedom convoys” of truckers and also makes it impossible for any news about COVID duplicity to make it on any mainstream news.

So the timing is, one may see, unfortunate.

The whole COVID narrative was rapidly collapsing.

The virus was burning out with Omicron.

Serious, serious questions about impropriety from Moderna and Pfizer were arising.

And they CONTINUE to arise.

But you won’t hear about them.

The Ukraine war is like a giant school shooting.

This will be THE ONLY STORY in the news for months.

Perhaps years.

There are two reasons that people do things.

The “good” reason and the real reason.

Why did Putin invade Ukraine?

Because Zelensky announced 11 months ago that his intention was to retake Crimea by force.

And why else did Putin invade?

Because Zelensky announced seven months ago that Ukraine’s desire and intention was to join NATO.

Any other possible reasons?

Zbigniew Brzezinski called Ukraine the “bread basket” of the former Soviet Union.

What is the only thing which could rival oil right now in terms of astronomical inflation and actual scarcity?

Food.

Wheat.

Food security.

Putin may be securing this bread basket for Russia.

And I don’t blame him.

But let’s look at some attack scenarios.

Ukraine –> Moldova.

No NATO territory crossed.

Finland –> Sweden.

No NATO territory crossed.

Azerbaijan/Georgia (or vice versa) –> Armenia –> Iran (joins Russian Federation?) –> Iraq –> Syria (joins Russian Federation?)

No NATO territory crossed.

Monaco invasion.

And finally:

Bosnia and Herzegovina –> Serbia –> Kosovo.

I save this one for last because it is the most germane to our film.

This film’s action largely takes place in Bosnia.

Language: Bosnian.

Invasion from the sea.

Order of battle as above.

If you like Romanian New Wave, you will love Take Me Somewhere Nice.

I cannot understate the importance of this film.

Ena Sendijarević did a phenomenal job directing this.

Shades of Kiarostami.

Sonic Youth.

Tu dors Nicole.

Taste of Cherry.

This is dark humor.

But there is no punchline.

That’s how dark it is.

Dark, deadpan humor.

Dark absurdity.

Banality.

Warts and all.

Balkans.

The forgotten parts of Europe.

Where it is a curse to grow up.

I always pray for the children and the elderly of Ukraine.

And the fucking Ukrainian morons who didn’t get involved in politics and prevent corrupt Joe Biden from becoming the U.S. President.

They bear some blame.

But we do not want civilian casualties.

Putin asked the Ukrainian military to overthrow Zelensky.

They have been very foolish to not heed Putin’s suggestion.

And Mark Milley was indeed at the Ukrainian border with 15+ wide-body planes full of Javelins and Stingers.

How exceedingly-foolish.

Russia has been unequivocal: provide weapons to Ukraine which are used against our troops and we will consider this an act of war.

Milley’s panties were wedged in his vagina over the “white rage” of Jan6, but here he is personally handing out missiles to Ukraine.

Why?

We have no defense treaty with Ukraine.

Our Congress has not declared war on Russia.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?

It’s the same faggots: Mark Milley, Lloyd Austin, Michael Gilday, Bishop Garrison…

The military is not coming to save us.

And Trump became a moron ever since he uttered the words “I got the Pfizer”.

Putin is the best leader in the world.

And this film is magnificent.

-PD

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present [2012)

As the world collapses, we have a few choices.

We always have these choices.

We seek truth.

And we endure.

We rebel.

And we find our communities.

As I write, America is in deep turmoil.

Boiling like a witch’s cauldron (some might say).

Perhaps I have written about it before…my ancestor…who was hung in Salem, Massachusetts for being a witch.

My relative, Susannah Martin.

Hung in 1692.

And if you are combing social media (like I am), you are likely to hear about Marina Abramović.

Let me start by saying that this is a beautiful woman.  A beautiful human being.

A genius.

But today’s context…a WikiLeaks email…a dinner invitation to Tony Podesta from Marina.

And specifically, the term “Spirit Cooking”.

I must preface by saying that there are other concurrent rumors abounding regarding Hillary Clinton.  The connection above is, incidentally, that Tony is the brother of John Podesta:  Hillary’s campaign chairman.

But back to these rumors.

I have not checked my phone in a couple of hours.

Anything could have happened.

Because it seems that SOMETHING (or 650,000 things) on Anthony Weiner’s laptop turned the stomachs of NYPD’s Special Victims Unit.

But again, there has (so far) been a mass media blackout regarding what is assumed.

It appears that there may be a massive pedophilia sting going on which directly relates to Hillary Clinton.  Furthermore, the evidence is pointing to possible child trafficking (in conjunction with said pedophilia).

We’re hearing lots of things here in America.

That there are incriminating photos of Bill and Hillary Clinton (and perhaps Huma Abedin as well) on the confiscated laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner.

Huma Abedin forwarded 650,000 emails to that computer.

From what I have read, this story could break at any moment.

As I said, I have not checked the news in a couple of hours.

But citizen patriots are all over these leads.

And so you can see how “Spirit Cooking” has been construed to be part of this vast conspiracy.

There is indeed a conspiracy.

But what role does Marina Abramović play in it?

I have no idea.

It would be sheer conjecture for me to venture a guess.

But a couple seconds of research reveals the bizarre video shot in 1997.

A recipe.  “Fresh breast milk.”  “Fresh sperm.”

This is what Abramović paints on a wall with a bloody-looking substance.

The recipe is to “mix” the aforementioned ingredients.

Correction, it reads “sperm milk.”

You can see why a casual observer might find this “recipe” concerning.

The next painting on the 1997 video is of the phrase “With a sharp knife cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand.  Eat the pain.”

This phrase needs some explanation.

As evident from watching this 2012 documentary about Abramović, knives and cutting have been a significant element of her art.

She is an artist.

But indeed, she has likewise been drawn to the pentagram (both cutting it into her belly with a razor blade during one performance and lying in the middle of a giant flaming pentagram which surrounds her in another performance art piece).

She is a performance artist.

Think Joseph Beuys.

A third panel from the 1997 video reads “Fresh morning urine sprinkle over nightmare dreams.”

You can see how one might mistake such recipes for witchcraft.

But we must ask, might they possibly be?

Tony Podesta was ostensibly asking his brother John whether he wanted to come participate in some kind of ritualistic dinner.

Just how much was it faux-Satanism (or paganism) and how much was it real deal bizzaro shit?

This is where the child sex ring (if the rumors are true) potentially frames this “dinner” as perhaps more than just a Black Sabbath unplugged concert over a bottle of red wine.

The next panel of 1997:  “Spin around until you lose consciousness.  Try to eat all the questions of the day.”

Hell…that sounds like Hillary’s campaign!  Teetering off the curb on 9/11 (just as her campaign is listing)…and “eating questions”–trying to squelch doubts (and voices).

And here’s where art becomes hypocritical.

Again, to watch the 1997 video (as a non-artist) would be to see what is seemingly some kind of occult ritual.  The “paint” mixture appears to be real blood (animal?) in addition to possibly entrails and feces.

It is extreme art.

The video (1997) is in Italian (shot in Italy) except when Abramović breaks into English.

But she seems to utter the word alchimia (alchemy).

Again, the artist (no surprise) has a fascination with the occult (at the very least).

Back to that first panel about the breast milk and sperm…

It continues with “Drink on earthquake nights.”

And over a doorway (?) there is more “blood” with the words “Spirit Cooking.”

So we must ask, is this what the Podesta brothers were up to?

Incidentally, the email referred to earlier was actually an invitation for John Podesta’s wife Mary to come to the “Spirit Cooking” dinner.

Or!  It was to John (the recipient) with a lazy add-on question ending reading “Mary?”.

So then it looks like perhaps John and Mary were invited to spend an evening with brother Tony and Ms. Abramović.

As some on Twitter have noticed (apparently), the 1997 video ends with (literally) a dark crystal…a “mineral pillow” which is supposed to transmit energy to the person whose head is placed against it.

The video (1997) appears to have been shot at Studio Stefania Miscetti in Rome.

Other artists who have done “installations” there include Yoko Ono and (similar to Abramović’s style in this piece) Hermann Nitsch.

Art is not a crime.

Unless it’s real blood from say, for instance, a murdered child.

There’s no evidence of that in Abramović’s 1997 installation, but it is EXTREMELY DISTURBING to contemplate the possibility that the Clintons were running a child trafficking ring for pedophiles.

Again, as I’ve said, those details are just rumors at this point.

But a significant amount of circumstantial evidence (Jeffrey Epstein and the Lolita Express) gives credence to the possibility that the Clintons (both of whom flew on sex offender Epstein’s jet many times [Lolita Express]) were indeed up to something unspeakably sinister.

There’s also the Hillary connection to Laura Silsby (who was convicted of child trafficking in Haiti).  The charges against Silsby and others were “abduction and criminal conspiracy” (carrying a possible 15-year sentence in Haiti).  This is also courtesy of WikiLeaks.

Laura Silsby may be an excellent woman who was caught up in a misunderstanding.

Marina Abramović is an amazing artist.  I hope to God she is not in some kind of criminal circle with the Clintons.

But the NYPD sure seems interested in Weiner’s laptop.  The stories I have been reading point to something HUGE involving the Clintons.

But I must say…the film Marina Abramović:  The Artist is Present is a masterpiece.

This lady is a true artist.

A Serbian.  A beautiful feminist.

The film recounts Abramović’s three-month test of endurance at MoMA in New York City.

Abramović may very well be an innocent bystander in an otherwise slimy criminal investigation.

I see no evil in the heart of Marina Abramović.

I see immense wickedness in the heart of Hillary Clinton.

I think it is quite possible that Abramović’s occult fascination is merely part of her exploration as an artist.  No one gets hurt in her art.  She only hurts herself.  Like Iggy Pop.

The scary thing would be to imagine the possibility that a criminal network like the Clintons had taken artful concepts of simulation and affected them as reality.

Those who sat across from Abramović at The Artist is Present included James Franco (shown), Lou Reed (not shown), and Björk (also not shown).

Apparently Lady Gaga showed up.  [I couldn’t care less.]

One final point…

The sense of temporality which Abramović affected with this piece bears a striking resemblance to the prolonged gaze of which Ingmar Bergman’s camera was so fond.

Great minds think alike 🙂

So there you go, world.

An assessment of the lovely Marina Abramović from an ardent Trump supporter.

Try to process that one!

 

-PD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Невиност без заштите [1968)

[INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968)]

I’m taking a wild guess here.

Because life is the greatest complexity.

Only yesterday I was tempting death.

But my name is Deathwish.

Death, for short.

A hard name to live up to.

I’m taking a guess that I have been forgotten…by most of those who meant so much to me.

Such a maudlin (Magdalen) sentiment, but fitting after such a lackluster evening.

If you have read this far, then you are likely qualified to view the ikonoclastic (!) film Innocence Unprotected.

It’s a film about a film.  Wikipedia really likes Croatian.  I suppose because of the Roman letters.

So the original film is question was ostensibly called Nevinost bez zaštite.

It was made during the war.  1941.

Under Nazi occupation (just like Les Visiteurs du soir).

But our 1968 film (the film about a film…sort of) is by my favorite Serbian director:  Душан Макавејев.  Which is to say (with pity) Dušan Makavejev.

And about that title…well, it sounds the same.  That enigma “Serbo-Croatian”…but I can only guess (“taking a wild guess here”) that it was Невиност без заштите.

It flashes before my eyes so quickly.

The H that sounds like N.

The B that sounds like V.

The upside-down N that sounds like I.

The C that sounds like S.

The b with its tail in the crosswind…blowing west to east…which, mercifully, sounds like a B (or b).

The 3 that sounds like a Z.

The Roman numeral III with a floor beneath it…like a Greek temple without a roof…sounds like “Shhh…(peaceful)”.

Those are the tough ones at issue.

Cyrillic letters.

Yes?

Now that I have bent linguistic steel like Dragoljub Aleksić, we shall move on to more pressing matters.

Bending spoons.  Like Uri Geller.

An Israeli.  You know how much I love Israelis 🙂

It is true, in a sense.

Once upon a time…that the French and the Jews were my favorite people.

Completely true.

What happened?  How did I get bent from my Henry Miller humanism?

How did I move to a Jean-Luc Godard humanism?

Shouldn’t humanism value all humans equally?

Yes.

In my wrath…in my protective love for the Palestinians I have said some very unkind things about the Israelis.  Nothing I’m sure they haven’t heard before.

I am not really at the vanguard of anti-Semitism.

But I said it to be hurtful.

Strong words.

Because I was mad.

I’m sure Norman Finkelstein is a fine person.

Anyone who would argue with Alan Dershowitz must basically be alright.

As for Dersh, any lawyer who would deign write a book called The Case for Israel (in 2003, no less…year of the Iraq invasion) must have a loose screw.

As for me, all my screws are loose.

I don’t give (nor do I receive) a fuck.  Err…

That is Innocence Unprotected…a rather Dodoist film which wonders whether the dots of my most recent ellipsis were italicized.  The dots.

It would be like writing a poem about Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (in full-on ekphrasis mode) and calling it “Howl”.

To say there is a considerable amount of film quotation in Невиност без заштите would be an understatement.

It is truly (Poetically) a film within a film.

I dreamt.

And as I did,

I hawked plywood espadrilles

in Belgrade.

Proudly,

to fund my feature film.

Writing is an attempt to live again.

Which is to say, if I begin to live again, then

I shall have to stop writing.

Not like this.

In misery.

Like Baudelaire.

Who only ever laid a hooker.

Because Jeffrey Immelt has neither the time nor mental capacity to read Walter Benjamin.

And that’s why General Electric will fail.

Because the futures of most things are the opposites of their current states.

The future of marketing?  Anti-marketing.

Because people are tired of being tricked.

They want a refreshingly frank admission of inferiority.

And the endearment begins.

Capitalism hasn’t yet cashed in on socialism.

Because to do so would mean its death.

Both.

Trump and Sanders frozen for all time.

Which would mean the humorous death of politics.

And MegYn Kelly would pull her hair out as she stumbled down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

A lifetime wasted.

But not over yet.

There’s still night school.

She could learn a useful trade.

Now that journalism is dead.

But maybe in some Ethiopian rainforest the last shrub of curiosity/courage/integrity sits waiting for some Amazon former Fox News reporter to scale its unwieldy 39 feet…to take a clipping from the top.

Journalisa arabica.

Caught in the middle like 5 Broken Cameras.

Nothing could curse a presidential candidate more now than positive coverage by Fox News.

Fox News:  a more toxic endorsement than David Duke.

So now they change their tune.

Which begs the question:  does that mean you think that Republicans were rational (God forbid) to oppose Trump so long?

Or was it merely their house organ which disapproved of the ginger waker?

“Wake up kids!  I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania for nothing!!”

I would…as a paean to Mr. Georgia Guidestones himself, like to “expand upon” Gone With the Wind.  You know…add some rap music to certain scenes, show Clark Gable brushing his teeth, and such.  And then call it (wait for it…):  Gone With the Wind.

Yes?

Because that last period is almost certainly italicized.

It was not good enough to be amateur.

But Makavejev fixed that.

 

-PD

 

Čovek nije ptica [1965)

It makes sense that Man Is Not a Bird was Dušan Makavejev’s first film.  It has that first-film “breadth” to it.

Where Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. (Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator) struck with absolute precision, Čovek nije ptica meanders about a bit in search of the appropriate film language. 

[N.B.  Wikipedia spells “bird” in Serbo-Croat for this film as “tica”.  I’m not sure why that is as “tica” seems to mean nothing (whereas “ptica” means “bird”).]

Though our film is set in a strange, backwards town, the narrative is considerably sprawled.

Eva Ras (the star of Love Affair…) is here as a more minor character.  However, she is the one who most lives out the message of the title.

This film has a strange obsession with hypnosis.  There is a hypnotist, but the film starts off with a scientific denunciation of superstition.  Through hypnosis (we are told), a distressed person can be made to abandon the grip of superstition.

Back to our hypnotist in the middle of the film…he is more of an entertainer than anything.  I am not entirely sure, but I believe the initial “legitimate” hypnotist (psychologist) and the later “entertainer” hypnotist are played by the same actor.

If that is the case, then Makavejev’s later metaphor (the circus) makes more sense.  But what is really complex about this film is the layering of metaphors upon one another.  It makes finding meaning very difficult.

One “reading” would be that life is a circus.  Another reading would be that “cinema” is a circus which purports to present a more truthful version of life than what we know.

But what does that mean?

Every day we experience life is some respect.  What could be “more truthful” than our daily experience?  Is Makavejev implying that we lie to ourselves?  Quite possibly.

As film viewers (spectators), we may become immersed in a particular movie and identify with characters and stories.  In a way, WE are the fourth wall.  The fourth wall is our temporary reality.  We enter into the false reality of film.

But, film gives us a chance to observe “ourselves”.  When we heavily identify with a particular character, we are having a sort of “out of body experience”.

And this brings us back to hypnosis.

Man Is Not a Bird is a very beautiful film (in a grimy, socialist, factory soot kind of way), but it is (perhaps not surprisingly) a dark film as well.

Shot, like Love Affair…, in black and white there is something more sinister about this film than the more gentle and humorous Love Affair…  But who are we kidding?  Love Affair… is inextricably wound up with death.  What could be darker than that?

Answer:  life without life.

It is what Eva Ras experiences as she is emotionally abused and disrespected by her husband.  Her husband, as it turns out, is working a job which is so hazardous to his health that the position is being eliminated ASAP.  And that’s in communist Yugoslavia!  All through this film we see a sort of poverty which separates East from West.  The poor Eastern Europeans.  What the West would come to realize (like New York Times film critic Vincent Canby) was that the East had something of immense wealth.  If pressed, I would call it soul.

Man is not a bird (even if, under hypnosis, he believes this to be the case).  Man is also no angel.  Janez Vrhovec plays a sort of martyr in this film.  Another more light-hearted character prods him as to whether he can feel the tingling of his burgeoning angel wings (the prodding is actually quite sardonic).

Man is not a machine.  But Jan Rudinski (Janez Vrhovec), the deft Slovenian machinist/engineer, has become a slave to his job.  From Pakistan to Dar es Salaam:  Rudinski makes his comrades proud with his exceptional efficiency.

But let us return to Eva Ras.

To turn Godard on his head, A Woman Is Not A Woman.

Why do I say that?

Because the French word for wife (femme) is the same as the French word for woman (femme).

And so a whole new world of wordplay opens up for us concerning TWO Godard films (namely):

Une Femme est une femme

and

Une Femme mariée.

In the first, we could potentially have the proto-syllogisms:

A woman is a wife.

Or, conversely:

A wife is a woman.

Furthermore, we could have:

A woman is a woman (the accepted translation in the English-speaking world).

Or, on the contrary:

A wife is a wife.

It gets to be such that we assume there is some sort of “boys will be boys” idiomatic phrase in operation.  Not being a native French speaker, I cannot confirm or deny that.  But I do know that Godard loves word play.  And therefore, the simple answer may not be the intended answer.

To illustrate further we have,

Une Femme mariée.

The accepted English translation is A Married Woman, but could it not be the more perverse and thought-provoking A Married Wife?

One thing is certain:

Man Is Not a Bird will have you under its spell whether you understand it or not.  At least, that’s the experience I had.

I would add one final bit of exegesis (extra Jesus).

It may very well be that Makavejev was making a disparaging statement about the communist Yugoslavian state with his first film.  It would be like the secret messages which Shostakovich managed to work into his music (particularly the string quartets) while living in Soviet Russia.

In the hands of communist governments, art (and particularly film…after Lenin’s admiration of the medium for its uniqueness) had to represent the people.  On one side (with communist eyes) this is admirable.  From the other (with capitalist eyes) this is seen as propaganda.

Any astute capitalist would have realized that (particularly in times of war) there was not much difference from communist and capitalist propaganda.  Both economic systems availed themselves of the practice of propagandizing.

But my guess, regarding the film in question, is that Makavejev recognized his own role as a propagandist (he had no choice in the matter…either please the censors or leave the profession) and likewise saw film as a double-edged sword of hypnosis.

And so his first film is really a realization…of that power in film…that power that can drive the masses to love…or to kill.

 

-PD

 

 

 

Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. [1967)

Something draws me to Eastern Europe.  I blame Romania.  Thank you Romania!  Yes, there was something about the ambiance which director Cristian Mungiu conjured up in 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile) which has stayed with me for a long time.

Really, it’s a rather mundane part.  Near the top of the film.  The goddess Anamaria Marinca traipses down the hall to find some soap…and cigarettes.  The scene is a college dormitory in communist Romania (pre-December 1989).  Girls in one room chat about beauty products.  There seems to be a good bit of bartering going on.  Marinca is mainly uninterested.  Looking for a certain kind of soap (if I remember correctly).  On the way back to her room she stops off at the room of a foreign student (non-Romanian) who sells cigarettes and gum and stuff.  The whole film she is searching for Kent cigarettes (a few mentions of this brand).  Not surprisingly, there are no Kents to be had in the dorm.  She settles for something else.  Perhaps.  I don’t know.

She stops and admires some kittens which someone has taken in.

It is astonishingly real.  On par with Roberto Rossellini.

Indeed, it might be said that all New Waves (from the nouvelle vague to the Romanian New Wave) have their birth in the neorealist films of Rossellini.

But Mungiu added a new wrinkle.

Marinca.  [The goddess of whom I spoke.]

Marinca is unglamorous.  No one is glamorous in 4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile.  We get the impression that it is the waning days of Ceaușescu’s reign.

Times are tough.  The policies of the state haven’t worked out so well.  It bears some resemblance to a prison.  Material items take the place of money (reminiscent of cigarettes as currency in jails).

What I have yet to define in this article is “goddess”.  What do I mean by that?

Well, I’m glad you asked!  Marinca (particularly in this film) is a goddess to me because she represents the opposite of the typical American woman in the year 2015.  Her beauty is her soul.  Her beauty is her loyalty to her roommate and friend Găbița.  Her beauty is her dedication to acting.  She is completely immersed in her unglamorous role…and it is eye-watering.

I have mentioned a similar impression (which further solidified my admiration for Romanian films) I got from watching Dorotheea Petre in The Way I Spent the End of the World (Cum mi-am petrecut sfârşitul lumii).  This masterpiece by director Cătălin Mitulescu preceded Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning film by about a year (2006).  I was again struck by another goddess of film (Petre) who, with the help of her auteur, created a character also in direct opposition to the meretricious, vacuous ideal of American womanhood in the 21st century.

And so it is that we finally come to the film under consideration:  Душан Макавејев‘s Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator.  Dušan Makavejev is Serbian.  Out of deference to his country I have listed his name in Cyrillic script.  Likewise, the title of the film (at the top) is in Serbo-Croatian.  It is a grey area about which I am not completely informed.  Suffice it to say that Croatia seems to generally use Roman letters (as opposed to the Serbian usage of Cyrillic).  It is a bit like the distinction (and writing differences) between Urdu and Hindi [which I have heard described as essentially the same language, but with two different writing systems].

I prefaced this article on Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. with my own backstory concerning Eastern European cinema because it is relevant to my approach going forward.

Before coming to this, my first Yugoslav (1967) film, I opened up the can of worms which is Czech cinema by reviewing Closely Watched Trains (Ostře sledované vlaky).  Jiří Menzel’s sexually-charged film poem from the previous year (1966) was a major revelation for me.  And so it is that Dušan Makavejev’s bittersweet confection shares more than just a communist framing with Menzel’s aforementioned erotic portrait.

Yes, Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. is about our old film-school standbys:  sex and death.  I can never combine those two words (in the context of film) without remembering the ridiculously funny scene of Jim Morrison at UCLA screening his student film in Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991). 

The fictional Morrison, then, would be trying to hop on a nonfictional bandwagon represented by the likes of Menzel and Makavejev.  Morrison’s time at UCLA (1964-1965) not only coincided with the staggered births of “new waves” around the world (particularly in Europe), but also occurred while Morrison’s father (US Navy Rear Admiral [RADM] George Stephen Morrison) was the commanding officer of a carrier division involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Jim Morrison lived fast.  Entered UCLA in 1964.  Graduated with an undergraduate degree in film in 1965.  Was dead by 1971.  But those years in between…  It’s no wonder Jim had an Oedipal complex (evident in the song “The End” [1966/1967]) when considering his father was involved in false-flagging the U.S. into a suicidal war against communism.  What a disgrace…

No, the real hero in the family was not RADM Morrison, but rather Jim.  He turned on the dream-switches of so many kids.  To put it quite bluntly, he was part of the counterculture in America which caused kids to start giving a fuck about the world and politics and geopolitics and confirmed charades (frauds, shams, etc.) like the Gulf of Tonkin “incident”.  Such a sanitary and slippery word:  incident.

It fits perfectly, in that there was no incident.

But while Morrison the Younger had gone off into Brechtian pop-rock, Serbian director Makavejev was busy making Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator.  It is equally stunning, for its medium, as “The End”.

Sex needs beauty.  A really luscious film like this needed Ева Рас (Eva Ras).  She is a bit like Jitka Zelenohorská’s character in Closely Watched Trains…mischievous, bewitching…  But there is one great difference between Ras and Zelenohorska:  Ras is a blond.

Though our film is in black and white, it is clear that Ras’ silky hair is rather fair (a detail which would not have escaped Hitchcock).  It must be said, however, that Makavejev did not give in to the easy femme fatale portrayal when it came to filming Ras.  Izabela (Ras) is a complex individual.  The film tells us that she is Hungarian.  She is different…other.  She needs sex.  She is passionate.

All the same, her portrayal by Ras is poetic and tender.  Really, what we are seeing here is a tentative feminism expressed by Makavejev which would become a thundering symphony of women’s liberation in Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. 

And it is good.  It is good for men to see these types of films.  We men idolize and reify women in the West, but we don’t often enough stop to really observe the trials of womankind.

In the best spirit of socialism, this film has something for everyone…men, women…ok, maybe not children.

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator is really an intense film.  If you have seen (and made it through) Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (a film I, incidentally, once made the mistake of showing at a party), then you’ll be alright.  For those faint of heart (I generally fall into that category), there are a couple of rough moments in this film (in the context of criminology).

In all, I am very proud and happy to have seen my first Serbian movie.  As a resident of San Antonio (and fan of the San Antonio Spurs), I feel it gives me a better glimpse into the life of one of my favorite basketball players Бобан Марјановић (Boban Marjanović).  I highly recommend this film…and Go Spurs Go 🙂

 

-PD