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The Wounds

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Wikipedia article




'The Wounds' is a 1998 Serbian drama film written and directed by Sran Dragojevi.

It depicts the violent lives of two boys in Belgrade as they aspire to make names for themselves in the city's underworld. The story takes place throughout the 1990s, against the backdrop of Yugoslav Wars and growing ethnic hatred.

The film won a Bronze Horse at the Stockholm International Film Festival and a FIPRESCI Prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, "For its powerful, dramatic depiction of the brutal reality and complexity of life in the Balkans today."[http://imdb.com/title/tt0165546/awards Rane (1998) Awards]

Plot



'Rane's opening sequence announces it as being "dedicated to the generations born after Tito". The film follows two boys, Pinki and vaba, through their preadolescence and early adolescence as they're growing up in New Belgrade during the Yugoslav Wars (199195).

Pinki was born on 4 May 1980the day Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito diedand was given his unusual name by his father Stojan Muibabi, an idealistic, impulsive, and patriotic Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer deeply devoted to the Titoist brand of communism. Father's first choice for his firstborn's name was actually Tito, but the municipal office registry administrators thought it provocative and inappropriate in the time of grieving so he quickly pulled out his backup optionsincluding Ramiz after a communist resistance Partisan guerrilla fightereventually settling on Pinki after another Partisan. Meanwhile, Pinki's best friend vaba is raised and cared for only by his grandmother, a Croatian Serb who had fled to Serbia during World War II amid genocide being perpetrated against the Serbs by the Croatian fascist movement Ustae.

Living in a block of apartment buildings in New Belgrade's neighbourhood of Paviljoni, both kids are extremely juvenile; Pinki is a bit more thoughtful and articulate while vaba is moody, impulsive, and prone to anger outbursts. The duo also has another friend in the neighbourhoodDijabola, an eager, geeky, and bespectacled outsider whose sexy and aloof single mother Lidija is a well-known television personality, hosting her own highly-rated interview program while his Slovenian father is absent from his life. Though they hang out with Dijabola, Pinki and vaba mostly consider him a third wheel and treat him poorly. He is constantly the butt of their insults and target of their roughhousing that occasionally crosses the line into physical violence.

The story begins during late summer 1991 as the kids watch Serbian troops (regular JNA troops and various volunteer militias) going off to war in neighbouring Croatia where the Battle of Vukovar is raging. Pinki's father Stojan is extremely frustrated about being forced into early retirement by the JNA and thus missing his chance to go to war. He spends his days glued to the television set, watching news reports from Vukovar and cheering on the JNA. By now he has transformed into a Miloeviesque Serbian nationalist; his impulsiveness nowadays mostly manifesting through petty quarrels with neighbours and verbal outbursts with ethnic and political overtones. Instead of Tito, he's become a huge supporter of Slobodan Miloevi while immensely disliking Miloevi's main political rival Vuk Drakovi. Prepubescent Pinki, for his part, is mostly oblivious to the events around him, spending most of his time compulsively masturbatingoften with neighbour Lidija in mind.

By 1992 and 1993, Serbia is under a UN trade embargo, and the war has spread from Croatia to Bosnia as well. Entering their early teens, Pinki, vaba and Dijabola begin their fascination with a neighbour across the street nicknamed Kure who drives a nice car, makes regular robbing excursions to Germany while dating a trashy kafana singer. They're deeply impressed with his swagger and lifestyle and are ecstatic one day when he invites them to unload his car that's full of apparel and appliances he brought over from Germany. In fact, he sends Dijabola away and picks only vaba, but then upon vaba's suggestion tells Pinki to come along as well.

Like many of their peers, Pinki and vaba enter the world of crime at fourteen years of age in an ex-communist community that is in hyper-transition, which, because of war and sanctions, reminds the two friends of a theater of the absurd. The idols of the main characters are famous Belgrade gangsters featured on a TV show called 'Puls Asfalta' ('Pulse of the Asphalt'), which turns them into media stars. Pinki and vaba fantasize of being on the show one day and they attempt to be noticed by its producers by committing crimes. After they succeed in establishing themselves as influential criminals and drug dealers, their uprising in the world of crime is cut by mutual conflict as both start having sex with Lidija. vaba shoots Pinki five times in the same places that Jesus was wounded two thousand years ago. Pinki manages to survive and after some time he escapes from the hospital, and calls his friend to make peace. The truce is more than terrible, as the wounded boy has, after an unwritten rule, to inflict five identical wounds to his friend, so the friendship can be rebuilt.

After shooting vaba three times, he considers wounding him one more time instead of the required two. They are suddenly interrupted by a furious Dijabola who shoots at them, especially vaba, for killing his mother. A shootout occurs and vaba and Dijabola are killed. In the end, Pinki, who is wounded and is lying on the ground, laughs at the audience by claiming that he "made out better than you."

Cast



* – Pinki

* Milan Mari – vaba

* Dragan Bjelogrli – ika Kure

* Vesna Trivali – Lidija

* Andreja Jovanovi – Dijabola

* Branka Kati – Suzana

* Miki Manojlovi – Stojan (Pinki's father)

* Gorica Popovi – Nevenka (Pinki's mother)

* Nikola Kojo – Biber

* Zora Dokni – vaba's grandmother

* – Ninana, the prostitute

* Fea Stojanovi – ikica, the news anchor

* Bata Stojkovi – Neighbour

* Seka Sabli – Neighbour

* Radoslav Milenkovi – Police inspector

* Nikola Pejakovi – Kafana owner

* Dragan Maksimovi – Patient in the hospital

* Milorad Mandi – Body builder

Production



Background

With the positive critical reaction to his 1996 film 'Lepa sela lepo gore' on the festival circuit throughout North America, thirty-three-year-old director Dragojevi ended up signing with the William Morris Agency whose representatives first approached him at the Montreal World Film Festival. Receiving backing from one of Hollywood's most prominent talent agencies along with having a successful film on his hands, would lead to the young director spending most of the late summer and early fall 1996 in advanced talks about continuing his career in the United States.

Simultaneously, back home in Serbia he had two film ideas in the early stages of developmentepic World War I story 'St. George Slays the Dragon' and a smaller film based on a television news report about two teenage criminals in contemporary Belgradeboth of which his Serbian producers, Cobra Film owned by the Bjelogrli brothers (Goran and Dragan), wanted him to do before potentially leaving for the United States. In the end, after going through multiple Hollywood meetings during which he reportedly got offered scripts that he found "execrable", Dragojevi decided not to move to America, choosing instead to do the smaller of the two films in Serbia.

Idea

The story is built around a real-life occurrence depicted in a 1994 episode of 'Traga', television series hosted and produced by Predrag Jeremi (1962-2022) that aired on RTV Studio B, about Mirko "Bea" Beevi and Marko "Kameni" Pejkovitwo criminally-involved Belgrade adolescents who started out as friends before viciously turning on one another. In a fit of anger one youth shot the other five times, but the wounded youth survived and recovered. Later, attempting to 'repair' their friendship, the shooter offered his recovered friend to shoot him five times in the exact body parts in order to get even. The recovered victim accepted the offer and shot his assailant back five times before they resumed their friendship.

Dragojevi was reportedly told of this by friends and decided to use it as basis for a screenplay he says he wrote in thirteen days. He furthermore claims to have purposely avoided watching the actual TV report because he didn't want to have his writing, casting, and directorial decisions subconsciously influenced by images or language in it.

After finally seeing the report upon film's completion, Dragojevi said he was amazed with the visual and behavioural similarities between the two sets of teens.

Casting

Looking for first-time actors to cast in the two main roles, the production team organized mass auditions during which reportedly thousands of Belgrade youths were looked at in area high schools, with director Dragojevi seeing several hundreds of them. As the number of candidates was narrowed down to ten, they were enrolled in 's acting studio for specific two-month training that included going over the entire script scene-by-scene before the final duoseventeen-year-old Peki and sixteen-year-old Mariwere selected. Dragojevi cast Duan Peki for the lead role of Pinki, noting that Peki shared a similar background with the character. The film proved to be Peki's first and only role, as he died in 2000.

The filming began in fall 1997 and had 78 shooting days.

The film's was funded in large part by the state institutions such as the state-run broadcaster RTS. Among its corporate sponsors, the movie's closing credits also list the McDonald's Corporation and Fruit of the Loom.

Release and reaction



As 'Rane' was going into theatrical release, the film's director, Sran Dragojevi, put out an accompanying statement explaining his personal motivation to revisit the subject of Yugoslav Wars, this time from the perspective of those living behind the frontlines. In it he directly accused the Miloevi administration of "forcing the young people of Serbia to grow up in the country flooded by the wave of primitivism and nationalism where those who went through puberty while Vukovar and Sarajevo were being destroyed have been made the terrible victims whose wounds will never heal": "This is a story about young criminals whom I believe have a deep moral right to be violent, even to murder, despite the political unacceptability of this idea. An insensitive society and a totalitarian Serbian regime have made thousands of Serbian teenagers dangerous, senseless killing machines, ironically whose main victims are themselves".[http://www.leisurefeat.com/woundsstatement.html Director's statement]

The film was released in FR Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in May 1998 where it became a cinema hit with 450,000 admission tickets sold[http://www.filminserbia.com/ProductionCompanies/Film/Cobra_Film/84/Default.aspx Cobra Film] despite its promotional cycle in the country being severely impacted by the government's refusal to run the film's ads on state television RTS (then under general manager Dragoljub Milanovi). The authorities had been dissatisfied with the country's bleak portrayal in the film. Talking to the Serbian edition of 'Playboy' in 2004, the movie's producer Dragan Bjelogrli said the following:

In January 2014, as guest on 'Vee sa Ivanom Ivanoviem', Bjelogrli expanded on the problem 'Rane' had with Serbian authorities back in 1998.

Starting in April 1999, the film began a theatrical distribution in Croatia thus becoming the first Serbian film in the post-Yugoslav Wars era to have distribution in that country. Another curiosity of its release in Croatia was the fact that it was subtitled. Even its title was translated from 'Rane' to 'Ozljede', all of which became subject of much outrage and ridicule. It became a hit in the cinemas regardless, selling more than 40,000 admission tickets (~42,000) in Croatia.

Looking back on his acting career, in February 2012, Bjelogrli brought up the role of ika Kure as being one of the dearest to him, but also revealed a later personal realization that he "could've done a much better job portraying it".[http://www.pulsonline.rs/pitajte-poznate/9047/dragan-bjelogrlic-bas-mi-je-bio-gust-da-izadjem-s-andjelinine-premijere Dragan Bjelogrli: Ba mi je bio gut da izaem s Anelinine premijere];'Blic Puls', 17 February 2012

Critical reception



United States

Amy Taubin of 'The Village Voice' finds 'Rane's pace to be erratic and frequently frantic, seeing its final scene as having "a relentless, demented logic of its own" while noting "there's nothing gratuitous about the violence of Dragojevi's cinematic language". She further remarks that the movie's imagery is "a bit too invested in martyrdom" representing "a politicized and catholicized version of 'live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse'" before she detects "a touch of Holden Caulfield in Pinki's voiceover narration", while noting "the film plays like a cross between 'Los Olvidados' and 'Dead Presidents'".

'The New York Times' Janet Maslin brings up Emir Kusturica's 'Underground' as having "demonstrated the anguish in the Balkans may be better conveyed through raucous, stinging satire than by more conventionally compassionate means" and notes that Dragojevi employed the same tonal approach, which "helped him define a new generation of thugs who arouse both horror and pity". She concludes that the movie is "filmed with enough stylistic bravado and sardonic narration to recall 'Trainspotting', seeing it best appreciated as an answer to the question vaba poses late in the movie (in response to Pinki's statement "You've got to care about something") "What if you can't find anything?"

Keith Phipps of 'The A.V. Club' sees 'Rane' as being "modeled in many respects after 'GoodFellas'" while "Dragojevi's decision to let lost youth tell its own story reinforces the power of his forceful narrative and visual style, as Pinki's nihilistic musings reveal a character for whom hope has never been an option". Phipps also picks up on Dragojevi's statement about 'Rane' being a very cruel and shocking film that makes 'A Clockwork Orange' seem like a Disney production by saying that "Dragojevi's post-Tito kids live in a world that Burgess and Kubrick could only have imagined; where 'Clockwork' carried a heavy allegorical weight, 'Rane' has the disturbing feel of reportage".

See also



* Dizelai, Belgrade youth sub-culture

* 'Crime that Changed Serbia', 1995 documentary about Belgrade gangsters

References




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