El polvorín

Goran Paskaljevic outdoes himself with this dark, satiric drama-comedy. What he gives us here is Serbia in a nutshell, a post-war Serbia torn with crime, anger and mistrust. "Who's to blame?" is the central question here and the line is spoken several times throughout the movie, once in a particularly hilarious scene. The bus scene is the one that illustrates the situation Serbia and most of former Yugoslavia are in-chaos. There is no one behind the wheel, so everybody is trying to take control.

There is no way to write about this film without saying something about the cast. It consists of all the finest Serbian and Yugoslav actors (two of them, Trifunovic and Glogovac, are from Herzegovina originally and two are from Macedonia) and it is one of the cases where the entire cast is the protagonist. Particularly fine performances come from Miki Manojlovic, Mirjana Jokovic, Mirjana Karanovic, Voja Brajovic, Aleksandar Bercek, Nebojsa Glogovac and Lazar Ristovski. The storyline is incredibly well built and all stories and characters are equally good.

This is a flawless, high quality tragicomedy which will provide you great entertainment and watching experience, as well as a good insight into the situation of this country. It is a humanistic and poignant film with a message, a cry for help. Balkan-a barrell of gunpowder, a-hole of the world.

There where at least twenty or more characters who took us through the streets of Belgrade in one crazy soul-searching period. Each character has a destiny to meet and each one affected by the Balkan States of political chaos. While the neighboring states continue to abuse the human condition, our symbolic characters are tearing at each other on the streets of Belgrade, in one form or another. Every character represents a state of nationality or the social mayhem drowning them. There is the two boxing buddies who turn on each other after revealing past truths, (the same as the peaceful neighbors of different nationalities who turn on one another when the war heated up). There is the Taxi driver who took revenge on a police officer, (the power of police enforcement riddles the country with corruption ). The man who returns back home to reclaim his lost love after a five year absence and a pocket full of money, (commenting on people who left the country to make their wealth overseas then coming back to buy their privileges). The young Bosnian Serb refuge who teams up with the underworld to make ends meet because it is the only way to survive in a hopeless situation, (commenting on the power of the underworld, taking control of restless and lost youths with no place to go). There are so many criss-cross factors that director Goran manages to inter-weave them all in a Robert Altman style. There are some tales that take the pleasure away from the more interesting small tales, but each one had to be told so as to cover the whole spectrum of the Balkan States in a sea of frenzy.

Very bleak and disturbing movie ridden with dark symbolism and utterly depressing resolutions. But what else would you expect from a film depicting a day in Belgrade on the eve of NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia. It is a great film though, but which deals with the dakrest subject matter, focusing on a society in the throws of agony, continuous degradation of the social fabric, and erosion of humanity under extreme conditions.

You can accuse it of being pretentious, self-indulging, or of trying to cover its supposed lack of substance by overwhleming use of violence, but you are living *here* in your cozy apartments, with your salaries and plentiful consumer goods while many people *there* actually experienced the life that is depicted in this movie. "Cabaret Balkan" is one gutwrenching scream of anguish and despair in the face of the harsh reality that people had to endure, and still do, judging by the latest news from Yugoslavia.

There are so few movies out there of this caliber. Though certainly a visceral movie, there is a feeling of connectedness with the characters that (though somewhat negated by the foreign language) makes this more than just an intense viewing. Sure, at the end, I breathed a sigh of relief and let go of the knot in my stomach, but the best part of this movie is its study of human nature on the edge. What makes this movie so awful to watch is not that the characters can be so evil, but that you know that they aren't inherently so. Please go see this movie now.

This movie impressed me a lot, however the fine details and message of this movie might very easily escape the unwary viewer. I was lucky to watch the movie with a friend from Ex-Yugoslavia who could point out what exactly lied behind every small gesture or circumstantial hints hidden in a single sentence.

The characters in this movie are in a constant dilemma, half self-inflicted, half caused by higher powers. Yugoslavia at that time is isolated - mentally, economically, morally. There is no valve to let of the steam, so the people take on themselves, murdering, plundering, threatening and raping. Almost every character is shown to be not fully guilty, but nevertheless brought down by their own acts of violence. The bus scene especially shows that the Yugoslavian people have forgotten to take their fate in their own hands. A young men is fed up with the system, his wasted life and the apathy of his people in general. The best scene in the movie for me

Tragic-comically ends this scene like the whole movie. The whole plot takes place one day before the Dayton agreement, another twist of fate, that just on this day those people lose their lives for nothing and absolutely nothing.

When you watch this movie you have to realize the deeper message has been made for the Yugoslavian audience to show them the mechanizations of their lives and their own guilt going with it. He tries to hammer this in the minds of the viewers hence the compressed plot and intermingling of scenes. A masterpiece.