The upcoming student movie Gorski Vijenac (eng. Mountain Wreath) is based on a poem of the same name by Petar Petrovic Njegos, a 19th century Serbian-Montenegrin ruler and a poet. Njegos was in charge of what today is Montenegro, in turbulent times while the Ottoman occupation of todays Balkan was coming to an end. Gorski Vijenac is his best known poem, considered to be a masterpiece, and deals exactly with the problem his predecessors had – fighting the Turks off Montenegro and the Balkans.
Of course, if it was only this local problem with the Turks the poem addressed, it would have never made the masterpiece status. What sets it apart from the regular slasher/thriller/kill the enemy poetry of the time is the deeper, more philosophical approach to war, survival, freedom and, in general, the very existance of a human being.
All this makes the job of adapting the poem into a movie a tough one. The directors of the upcoming film, students of the University of Arts in Belgrade, Jelena Tokic and Lazar Bodroza, said in the interviews to Blic and Politika, that these universal questions and problems presented by Njegos are exactly the questions the movie will try to touch. And after the first glance of the trailer, I can clearly see that this is not going to be your typical history/documentary movie. It’s set in an undetermined, universal time and place, highly stylysed and with heavy use of the latest CGI – some bits and elements even remind of Hero, House of the flying daggers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but also Fifth Element, although clearly with a much thinner budget. Take a look at the trailer.
It is certainly interesting to see something different and refreshing while we await for the upcoming Serbian blockbusters – Dragojevic’s St Georgie slains the dragon, teen comedy written by Dimitrije Vojnov The age of innocence and the much awaited Charlestone for Ognjenka, so I hope that we will be able to see this movie soon in cinemas.
Official site of the film (until the gorskivijenac.com comes alive, that is) and the place where you can find better quality trailers: The Mountain Wreath.
You can find the entire poem translated in English here or here.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The trailler is fantastic, full of creativity. It seems that it is a great movie, different at least.
Serbs are demonstrating that low budget is not a excuse…
like in tennis, film, music, parties and so on.
I can see that a new Serbia is coming
I saw the trailer. It’s quite haunting; it stirs you inside.
I’m only now getting over it!
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It looks superb.
Viktor, don’t you want to change “wrath” to “wreath?”
Stellar. Will there be a local premiere of the full ticket?
Blackbird, sure, thanks for pointing that out. Next time I’m just going to copy paste the title, I obviously have some problem with the word wreath…
Kevin, I hope so, but I don’t know yet if the movie is even finished by now – and even if it is, it is always a question if the producers – or whoever decides that – if they think this is a good movie for cinemas, ie will it be profitable or not.
In addition to this post let me just add that the first Serbian Film Festival will be held in Novi Sad next month.
A number of movies will be premiered in Serbia including Kusturica’s latest.
BTW it will be interesting to see whether the government will give the proper support needed for this national film festival. This year they are running on a small budget but it will need to increase vastly to become the event it deserves to be.
And why not? If you think about it Serbia does deserve its own Accademy Awards or BAFTA with the ceremony and live coverage that comes with it. God knows there are enough talented actors and film makers in the country.
Bg Anon, you’re right. You are perfectly right. It’s about time this happens in Serbia. The time is ripe, right now.
The movie itself is not finished, nor produced. The trailer you’re seeing is a “pilot” trailer, created to attract producers and too see general public opinion. We all hope it will go full budget cinema movie one day…