Inferno (II) (2014) User Reviews

One of the best movies i've ever seen!

[trimken · 10/10 · 20 April 2018]

First of all, this film is very difficult to watch because of tragic content, and it's Eastern European setting can be complicated to understand in the right context, which makes it hard to be accepted as a piece of art. Inferno depicts an extremely tragic story of an Eastern European family in modern Eastern European capitalist society. Basically, everything, that could go wrong went wrong in this film. The main character (Mare) is a mentally unstable person, who was traumatised by long-time unemployment and is struggling to cope with cruel reality. The factory he worked in was definetly a socialist remainder, which production became outdated - a very typical scenario for post-socialist economies. The owner didn't consider the future of workers when he closed the factory and lied to them, that the factory would be modernised (he planned to demolish it instead). Mare was raised in a socialist society, in which every worker lived modestly, but had a great deal of social support (guaranteed employment, government appartment, free healthcare etc). A lot of factories tried to continue such policies in regard to their workers after capitalist takeover, but eventually failed (which explains modern time in the film). Deprivation of what was meant to be in the past basic human rights and extreme poverty made Mare aggressive and unpredictable, eventually leading to the total destruction of his family in the sequence of grim events. The film is very well made. Camera work, picture quality and acting is decent. Inferno performs very well on this for European standarts. Every scene is depicted very realistic, which is movie's main advantage. A lot of plot events demonstrate one or another real problem of everyday living while being brocken in Slovenia - in sum they make the plot as a whole seem a bit other the edge and, at the same time they give the viewer the ultimate summary of the variety of troubles one can possibly meet there. The inhumane nature of post-socialist "wild capitalism" and the collapse of social responsobility concept are shown in full. This movie brilliantly demonstrates a giant gap between capitalist ideals and their implementation on practice in transition economies - new capitalist owners totally disregard their factory's previous social responsibilities for profit without giving anything in return, breacking an already brocken system completely and putting lives of thousands of people in jeopardy. There are no protagonists in this movie. Both the main character and the factory owner are flawed, however one is a genuine victim of the broken system, which deeply failed to at least guarantee a normal, humane transfer from one economic system to another. This movie shows the best explanation of the so-called "socialist nostalgia" ever filmed. It can also be attributed to the Oligarchy problem in Russia and the modern social processes in Eastern Europe.

Probably the worst movie I've ever seen

[Sviatoslav1 · 1/10 · 9 October 2014]

This movie shows the struggle of a broke Slovenian family (father, mother, 2 kids) during the recent times of financial crisis and perma-recession. It reminisces the times of socialism and how society has changed since then.

This is the first time I've rated a movie 1. Here are the reasons:

The narrative is quite simple and characters could be divided in two categories: those in the position of power and those who get exploited. Most of the times, the exploiters are smart, successful and/or evil sociopaths, while the exploited are dumb, poor, but well intended and their actions always result in catastrophe. Kids are portrayed as nice and well behaved despite growing up in conditions of extreme poverty and unstable parents. Not very realistic. The actions of most of the characters don't make any sense and are there just to fit the narrative.

Next, the use of graphic and disgusting scenes to shock the audience. I presume the point of these scenes is to get the audience to understand the sheer despair and misfortune of the main protagonists, but in my opinion, Inferno is trying too hard. As misfortunes are piling up, the movie gets more and more predictable towards the end and at some point I was just waiting for it to be over.

Inferno is a depressing and angry social drama with simple and stereotypical views on society and people. It offers no solutions, but complains a lot about how unfair the world is. In a way, it is a good reflection of the current state of mind in Slovenia and the Western world in general.