IT SAYS something when Tim Anderson, the movie reviewer at BloodyDisgusting.com, the internet portal for all the unlovely, squelchy genres, likens watching a film to “having my soul raped”. Meanwhile, over at the similarly inclined Fear.net, Scott Weinberg describes the same picture as “one of the most disgusting, unpleasant, and angry films I’ve ever seen . . . I believe it’s [also] one of the most legitimately fascinating films I’ve ever seen . . . And I will never watch it again. Ever.”
The cause of the gentlemen's distress is A Serbian Film, an extremely powerful and violent political allegory featuring images of murder, rape, incest, necrophilia and paedophilia. Since premiering at the South by Southwest festival in Texas last March, the project has been the subject of some heated debate and several legal challenges. Its graphic content has led to it being pulled from several programmes, including London's Fright Fest – where it aroused the interest of Westminster City Council – and San Sebastián's Horror and Fantasy Festival.
The filmmakers insist their work has been grossly misinterpreted, that A Serbian Filmutilises pornography but is not, in itself, pornographic. "We used pornography as the major metaphor," explains screenwriter and director Srdjan Spasojevic. "Because, for people in our region, after all those years of wars and mass manipulation and political corruption and moral collapse, we were brought to a point where we had to consider our lives as pure exploitation. We were intellectually, creatively, and psychologically raped every day from the moment we were born. This is pornography as a metaphor for real life."
Working from a screenplay he co-authored with respected film critic Aleksandar Radivojevic, Spasojevic takes this analogy to terrifying extremes. In the film, Srdjan Todorovic (a popular Serbian talent) plays a retired porn star who, anxious to support his beautiful wife and young son, is lured back into the business for one last job. By the time he realises he has inadvertently signed up for a "snuff" film, his sinister new employers have already drugged him and ensnared his family in their vile plans. A final, nauseating sequence, revealing the horrific extent of the hero's debasement, makes Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salòlook like Hello Kitty.
“We did not set out to make a shocking film,” says Spasojevic. “That was not our primary purpose. We had no plans to shock, just to express directly. We were just being honest. We wanted to express something in an unflinching manner. We want people to know. This is what it was like to live in our region for the past two decades. It was stupid and brutal. We were in a stupor. This was the only way to recreate that feeling. I am no theorist. So in my naive way I did not think being honest and straightforward was a bad thing.”
There's a great deal of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposalin the ferocity and revulsion of Spasojevic's work. That has not prevented various authorities from misconstruing his intentions. The film was granted an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, but not before four minutes and 11 seconds were edited out of the final theatrical cut; the board cited "elements of sexual violence that tend to eroticise or endorse sexual violence" to justify making A Serbian Filmthe most censored UK release since 1994.
One can't help but wonder if this decision had more to do with the film's notoriety than its content. Even critics who have dismissed it as outrageous "torture porn" have conceded that A Serbian Film's discombobulating presentation leaves no room for enjoyment. Its jolting camera work and nightmarish editing are, even divorced from the horrors on show, calculated to produce a queasy, physical response. It is, frankly, unclear how even a diseased psyche might pick out a single "eroticised" moment, let alone an "endorsement".
“I believe the images defame violence,” says the director.
“The film is about the destruction of the family unit. This is a perfect and understanding family, but even they are corrupted. It is hell. It is not meant to be commercial. It is not meant to be popular. We were not thinking about audiences or film festivals when we made it. It is not an entertainment.”
For some, the film's use of violent sexual imagery is, regardless of the filmmaker's stated aims, beyond the pale. In September a private screening at London's Raindance Festival prompted the headline "Sick Serbian film hits London" in the Sun. Last month a Basque court banned the film as a potential threat to "sexual freedom". By now, of course, Spasojevic is accustomed to such legal interventions.
“It started before anyone had even seen he film,” he says. “We shot the film in Red Digital. It was only when we went to transfer the digital copy into film that we realised we had a problem. We were working with a processing lab in Munich. We had explained to them the nature of the film and what we were trying to do. But when we went to pick up the print, the lab managers were waiting for us with police officers. They had problems with the content and they were afraid that what they were watching was real. We had similar problems at the Magyar Processing lab in Hungary. After the job was done we were questioned.”
Shot in the gritty style that characterised 1970s American cinema – Spasojevic cites William Friedkin, John Carpenter and Walter Hill as major influences – A Serbian Film's realism has proved consistently problematic. "The most common question at festivals is whether we killed or raped anyone," says Spasojevic. "I have to keep explaining that the scenes with children are not real. They're done with puppets and dolls. It's absurd really."
Away from larger arguments pertaining to artistic freedom and notions about representing the unrepresentable, there is a broader cultural context to consider. A Serbian Filmpresents a series of unspeakable horrors, but similarly coruscating language and imagery has become commonplace among many angry young artists emerging from the Balkans. The hip-hop label Bassivity is home to any number of enraged, transgressive voices, among them Wikluh Sky, the genre-defying rapper who composed A Serbian Film's discordant score. It's also significant that the film's cast includes some of the region's most respected actors.
"There is a lot of anger," says the director. "But the anger is positive because it acknowledges problems that are ignored by newspapers and television. The danger is that the corruption is normalised. That's fertile ground for violators and predators." This collective rage is evident in a new wave of subversive regional cinema. In common with Spasojevic's debut feature, many of these dark political fables borrow from the terminology of prostitution and pornography. Another recent production, Mladen Djordjevic's The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, features a young couple who operate a travelling freak-show exhibiting depraved sexual acts.
"We live in a world that is sugar-coated in political correctness," says Spasojevic. "But what is permissible is no longer adequate for conveying what it happening in the world or what has happened in our region. Watching war crimes on primetime news when you are a 15-year-old boy and experiencing the bombing of your city in your early 20s will hardly inspire you to make beautiful things." A Serbian Filmarrives on UK screens this coming Friday. It is not scheduled for a cinema release in the Republic of Ireland, but will be issued on DVD in January. At the time of writing, staff at the Irish Film Classification Office had yet to view the film.
A Serbian Filmis on DVD from January 3rd
