The
image in your mind’s eye a bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina is probably the destroyed
and subsequently rebuilt Stari Most in Mostar. Nevertheless, there are plenty
of bridges in the capital city of Sarajevo, architecturally and metaphorically.
Indeed, they serve as both backdrops and symbols in Bridges of Sarajevo (trailer here), an anthology
film conceived by French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon, which screens during
the 2015 Bosnian Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York, kicking off tonight at
the Tribeca Cinemas.
Yes,
anthology films are usually uneven and Bridges
is especially so, with the highs being particularly high and the lows being
Jean-Luc Godard. Happily it starts off with a strong entry, Kamen Kalev’s “My
Dear Night,” depicting the final hours of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, much like a
moody, almost Shakespearean tragedy. True, we know how it must end, but Samuel
Finzi is quietly riveting as the doomed aristocrat. It is probably the one
segment that has both the merit and the elastic capacity to be expanded into a
feature.
WWI
is a major focus in Bridges, continuing
with Vladimir Perišić’s somewhat experimental “Our Shadows Will,” which overlays
audio excerpts from Gavrilo Princip’s pan-Slavic, crypto-socialist confession
with contemporary scenes of disaffected nationalist and leftist youth. It is a bold
juxtaposition, but Perišić simply does not have the time to fully develop the
idea.
Leonardo
di Costanzo’s “The Outpost” is a technically polished segment portraying the
exploited enlisted Italian peasantry struggling with the horrors and
absurdities of WWI. The tactile feeling of the constituent film is impressive,
but it is more of a sketch than a full dramatic arc. Likewise, Angela Schanelec’s
“Princip, Text” takes much the same approach as Perišić’s contribution, but it
is less provocative. Cristi Puiu also shows a preoccupation with text, much in
the spirit of Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective. As satire, “Das Spektrum Europas” seems to cut both ways, eavesdropping
on a tired married couple as they dissect Keyserling’s early Twentieth Century
analysis of the Balkans from an anti-American and borderline anti-Semitic
perspective.
Godard’s
“The Bridge of Sighs” is an eight minute mashed together collage that is more
watchable than his last two features, for what that’s worth. Regardless, if you
seriously follow or cover world cinema, you really need to see it, just to be
able to render a fuller judgement on his late career years. Sergei Loznitsa’s “Reflections”
is also collage-like in form, but visually it is exceptionally arresting. Essentially,
Loznitsa overlays Milomir Kovacevic’s war photographs with present day Sarajevo
street scenes, achieving a truly ghostly effect.
Marc
Recha’s “Zan’s Journey is more or less an exercise in oral history, but his
subject’s memories are truly moving. Aida Begić (whose feature Children of Sarajevo played the 2013
BHFF) incorporates many such voices into “Album,” selecting several brief but
unusually telling recollections of the workaday trials of life during the war.
Then
Isild Le Besco adds a graceful humanist touch to Bridges with “Little Boy,” the story of a plucky five year old survivor,
now living with his grandmother. Themes of youth and the loss of innocence also
factor prominently in Ursula Meier’s concluding “Quiet Mujo,” featuring an
extraordinary lead performance from Vladan Kovacevic, as a young orphan who
encounters a grieving professional woman at a cemetery’s boundary between Muslim
and Christian sections.
