“This is his life”: Profesionalac, a Balkan comedy. The word and the work of Dusan Kovacevic, satire, tenderness and Yugoslavian history

Profesionalac supposed, in 2003, the return to the direction of the big playwright and scriptwriter (in addition to political activist) Dusan Kovacevic more than twenty years after the outstanding figure The spy of the Balkans (commented here). In this occasion already alone and again adapting a proper stage play of the year 1990 (certainly edited in Spain for Bow in 2005 with translation of another playwright, the Catalan Jordi Galcerán) so successful as the majority of the work of the author, threatening wise person of the sociopolitical sulfide, the comedy of local customs and manners / crazy and the virguerías simbólicas/metalingüisticas. It never obviated, always sophisticated, worried because the "message", the "thesis" do not eat the diversion or of that this one is exclusively to his service. Leaving that the criticism against the system usually takes the form of a farce, sometimes smiling, sometimes sad, always melancholic and a point macabre. As if his texts wanted to bottle a way of being, a concept of “the Serbian thing” that venerates equally the fatalism and the jollification, the resignation and the mockery. A lucidity that comes straight from the organic knowledge of the defeat.

Dusan Kovacevic (left) directing Bora Todorovic

It would be extraordinarily arid to start shelling here the work as Kovacevic's scriptwriter (down whose auspices have rolled, Slobodan Sijan, Goran Paskaljevic, Goran Markovic or Emir Kusturica), so I was enough to say that without his contest the Yugoslavian movies from the 80 even the actuality would be completely different. From the rough choral comedies (Ko to fluff peva, 1980), up to the historicist review (Maratonci trce pocasni krug in 1982, Underground in 1995 or in another tone his recientísimo script for luxurious Sveti Georgije ubiva azdahu already in 2009), happening for the underground and ridiculous criticism of the communism and the post-titismo (Poseban tretman in 1980 or already mentioned Balkanski spijun en1984) or the sensibility near to the magic realism (a big tradition Balkan and Russian, certainly, not always is necessary to assume it to the “Latin-American boom”) of beautiful Sabirni Centar (1989), a singular fable on the persistence of the memory and the double nature of the death, the physics and that of the memory. In any case an indispensable personality and a curious case of indirect responsibility, since Kovacevic's style in the drama and the text, his extraordinary clairvoyance and his tenderness are imposed on almost (perhaps Kusturica has been the exception in some aspects, although in fact he is influenced himself by Kovacevic of the primerísimos 80) any director, up to the point of being able to affirm that a movie written by Dusan Kovacevic is a movie of Dusan Kovacevic. And now if, now Profesionalac. This work, an enormous victory on the stages, (this is an unusual peculiarity of the author: it is a figure permanently critical and challenging but paradoxically popular and ticker clerk, an extraordinary tightrope walker between the awkward thing and the mainstream) had already known a television adaptation in 1990 with two major glories of the Yugoslavian performance like Danilo “Robe“ Stojkovic and disarming Bogdan Diklic (one of the actors the most talented that I have seen in my life) like the secret police and the ancient dissident whom he watched for years.

Kovacevic recovers a work, which curiously it precedes (and it can turn like a variant for better) in not few thematic aspects to a bloodless jumble as The life of others (2005), perfect example of European qualitè all dressed up that inflates a good idea by means of pretentiousness transcendentalista, false depth and domesticated esthetics of luxurious series. And opposite to so much dramatism without real drama, this black comedy (genre indisociable of the Balkan movies) acclimates the original to the contemporary Serbia placing two times of the history at present and in the Yugoslavia in full destruction during the 90s (essential in this sense the understudy The Balkan pitfall of F rancisco Veiga published by Grijalbo in 1994 and checked in 2002), a change that only benefits to the potency the speech and to multiply the impact of his sardonic end lampedusiano.

Unfortunately the movie if it suffers on one hand from the permanent problem in Kovacevic's scripts, this is, his excessively theatrical mechanics (here partially hidden by the constants flashbacks that they air the plot limited scarcely to a room), and for other one of a quite flat, scarce staging in resources purely cinematographic and definitely functional. A disadvantage staunched partially by the virtues merely “esthetic“ of the words and by the conceptual force, the historical sagacity and the comical panache. Namely Kovacevic is not the good director, but he is a man with ideas and aptitude to count, with an overwhelming office and genuine talent, a combination that serves to him to go out more than airy of the attempt and to end up delivering a movie replete with virtues, which see to simple sight and someone more intangible and cardinal others.

This way the personages' duel in the only stage of the office, ventilated with these constant jumps to the past, is complemented, in one of these typical metaphorical operations of the author (something that works like mirror of the principal history, a teatralización that is a work inside the work and that comments / complements on this central incident to “to put it in scene”), for the strike that develops in the publishing house (and that is commanded by a violent ex-informer and killer of the police) that the personage of Branislav Lecic directs: Teodor Teja Kraj an ancient political leader against Milosevic, frustrated writer and refixed university teacher in businessman who has forgotten the idealism for the pragmatism. A personage that, one day receives the visit of a little man, Luka Laban chief of the police of the ancient diet, which delivers to him a few books and a suitcase that contains literally his past, a life compiled by the one who was in charge of watching him.

The movie is supported in one double of principal personages marvelous but a point unbalanced in favor of the memorable commissioner that Bora Todorovic composes with his habitual economy of means and his elaborate comical "timming" based precisely on the containment gestual, here also enriched by the proper physical decline of the actor, what promotes even more his habitual given up and melancholic gesture. But although it is true that Lecic does not stop giving the size like partenaire and that he is a somewhat rigid actor, his presence (instead of the same Diklic, for example) he answers to a different will. And the fact is that the actor interprets here a change if the same, and the documentary inserts of the movie are therefore real, testimony of his mítines and activities when the Pli was leading ell revolucija (and in one of them it can turns to proper Kovacevic, intervening from the real past in the movie that directs from the present), therefore personage and actor blurs his limits for refundirse in the only one and they provide to the movie and to the personage of a different dimension, near to the autofiction. A risky approach that not only uses the habitual metafiction in Kovacevic but it introduces reality records in simulation territories. Submitting the narrated to a collision against the real thing, turning the confrontation between personages into a personal exorcism. An immersion in the immediate past of a country and of a generation across the "dramatized", stylized version, of one of them like symbol of the rest.
But this subtext, this double level, is always supported to streak by the direction and the writing, in such a way that I did not go on to the first plane, but it is supported like enriching element and not like only one. Kovacevic shows then his brilliant handling of the gag, with special mention to his intelligent use of “an appellant” (the friend always descalabrado, the blonde who appears by spell …) and in his absence of prejudices to resort to the vodevil: But especially the movie counts with one cardinal wise move: to begin everything in a completely serious way and a threatening point to turn it then progressively absurdly (an exercise of paranoia splendidly achieved also in The spy of the Balkans, where the laugh is born of the fear) doing that the comicalness works for contrast.

The hunting and alertness on Tile is opened like a species of thriller that mixes reporteril reconstruction and abstraction kafkiana and is transforming per moments in its own parody (what into certain way turns it in even more terrifying) with this commissioner appearing with his mortadelianos disguise in all the moments of the life of the protagonist (brilliant the detail of the different mustache every time or that of the musicians run aground in the same one according to recognizing it during his first appearance like improbable newspapers seller in the bar where the protagonist meets his friends) and determining the direction of the same one, first trying to kill it and then saving it on having discovered it in love with his own daughter, without we happening to discern which is two attempts more stupid and off balance. This way every operation is more ridiculous and more delirious (deifying the deployment of police officers disguised as Santa Claus and descacharrante the moment in which it takes in arm the protagonist after falling down of a train in march) in a climb that thinks about how to undress the idiotic absurd cigar of a system frenzied and rotted up to the core.

A movie that it improves rested and that supposes a vital and personal trip for the recent history of Serbia during a decade in whom the hell one installed in the heart of Europe without it seeming to nobody to import big thing for him. A sinister walk along the spied and manipulated memory of the hand of a man who reconstructs his life of the hand of someone who, from the shade, knows it better than.

Profesionalac (The Professional)

The director: Dusan Kovacevic

Year: 2003

Country: Serbia

104 min.

It photographs: Bozidar 'Blunt' Nikolic

Music: Momcilo ‘Bajaga‘ Bajagic

Script: Dusan Kovacevic

I distribute: Bora Todorovic, Branislav Lecic, Natasa Ninkovic, Dragan Jovanovic, Josif Tatic, Miodrag Krstovic, Renata Ulmanski, Milos Stojanovic, Sergej Trifunovic

Filed bajo:00's, Balkageddon, comedy, Dusan Kovacevic, Historical, I Spy, Profesionalac, Serbia Tagged: autofiction, balcanes, Belgrade, Bora Todorovic, Branislav Lecic, comedy, Dusan Kovacevic, war, history, black humor, manipulation, musical, metatextual, Milosevic, paranoia, politics, police officer, Profesionalac, reality - fiction, Satire, Serbia, catastrophe, tatro, alertness