The first thing you notice about "Svjedoci" is that the camera moves. This filmmaker makes extensive use of tracking shots in the opening scene to follow a convoy of military vehicles, and a car that carries our "witnesses". This ain't your father's, or your father's father's European art film; "Svjedoci" plays like a homage to the film-making aesthetics of Brian DePalma, or in a broader sense, the aesthetics of contemporary American film-making. And sure enough, inside a Croatian watering hole, the walls are decorated with movie posters; most notably: "Rocky" and "Jaws", two films that are distinctly mainstream and American. The police procedural, that's the genre "Svjedoci" employs to tell its story about being a good, moral Croatian. To accomplish this mammoth feat with an American sensibility strikes me as being mildly subversive, since American isn't always good and moral.
A Serbian man is shot. Croat soldiers pulled the trigger and Barbir(Drazen Kuhn) is the detective willing to prosecute the young men against the wishes of the town. "Svjedoci" wants to make the point about killing in uniform being no less despicable than killing in civilian clothes. We see the trigger-man in both guises. The trigger-man's brother is the moral compass who tries to straighten out his vigilant sibling, which diffuses the narrative somewhat, because we thought Barbir was the story's appointed moral compass. As they say, too many moral compasses spoil the soup. In other words, one hero is more than enough.
Somebody is in the shed. The fourth witness is in the shed. Wasting away to nothing, presumably, since nobody is glimpsed providing the prisoner with any sustenance. While the filmmaker occupies himself with all his narrative pyrotechnics(he's no doubt seen "Memento"), "Svjedoci" underestimates the power in getting to know the enemy as a person while his/her fate is being determined. One brother treats this Serb as a human being, while the other brother treats his enemy as collateral damage.
Should a child, "Svjedoci" asks the viewer, pay for the sins of the father, who is a collaborator for the enemy? To my surprise, "Svjedoci" isn't some grim movie about life during wartime in Croatia. It's an entertainment first, message second, sort of movie.
A Serbian man is shot. Croat soldiers pulled the trigger and Barbir(Drazen Kuhn) is the detective willing to prosecute the young men against the wishes of the town. "Svjedoci" wants to make the point about killing in uniform being no less despicable than killing in civilian clothes. We see the trigger-man in both guises. The trigger-man's brother is the moral compass who tries to straighten out his vigilant sibling, which diffuses the narrative somewhat, because we thought Barbir was the story's appointed moral compass. As they say, too many moral compasses spoil the soup. In other words, one hero is more than enough.
Somebody is in the shed. The fourth witness is in the shed. Wasting away to nothing, presumably, since nobody is glimpsed providing the prisoner with any sustenance. While the filmmaker occupies himself with all his narrative pyrotechnics(he's no doubt seen "Memento"), "Svjedoci" underestimates the power in getting to know the enemy as a person while his/her fate is being determined. One brother treats this Serb as a human being, while the other brother treats his enemy as collateral damage.
Should a child, "Svjedoci" asks the viewer, pay for the sins of the father, who is a collaborator for the enemy? To my surprise, "Svjedoci" isn't some grim movie about life during wartime in Croatia. It's an entertainment first, message second, sort of movie.