You sometimes grab a movie that just happens to sound interesting – you know nothing of the Director, the cast or the reviews. Often you are disappointed and lost faith in the roulette of random film selection, but sometimes, on occasion, you find a movie that captures you. The Wounds is such a movie.
Set against 5 years of change from 1991 – 1996 in Belgrade, Serbia – The Wounds is a buddy film of the darkest kind, it’s also a coming of age story, a film about betrayal and honour, a film that propagates itself above the average film, by providing an allegory of Serbian sentiment towards the world, towards its neighbours, and towards itself. A state at war with others and itself, bringing hope and yet celebrating martyrs, and promoting murderers as saviours.
If you are the sensitive, politically correct type of film viewer, then The Wounds will probably piss you off. It is racist at points, but only reflecting what the Serbs felt at the time – hate towards Slovenia, the Albanians, the Croatians. A particularly cruel scene at the start involves three of the characters – two of whom are Serbian, one of which is Slovenian – they decide to play a game, essentially “kill the enemy” with rocks, calling him a Croatian, Albanian and so on.
The snivelling Slovenian, Dijibola, whimpers as rocks are hurtled at him and as the two Serbian kids name call and throw racial slurs at him. With them as the only people he can call friends, he puts up with this. They pick on him often, and treat him like shit a second-rate human being, which is almost second nature to them.
The humour is dark, and it is sporadic, but it is welcome as without it the movie would be just too dark for most to stomach
Dijibola’s mother, Lidija, has TV show, which invites killers and gangsters within that region to entertain the viewers with their opinion on what is happening in Serbia, and what they consider to be the rules of being a gangster – it’s all rather sensationalist, but it seems to capture the youth audience that fail to see any prospect of hope, and therefore admire and idolise these gangsters.
The two Serb kids, Pinki and Kraut, are best described as rival siblings – they respect each other, but they will try to better each other. They live next to a nutter called Dickie and his trailer-trash girlfriend. Dickie takes both Kraut and Pinki under his wing, the kids are endeared by Dickie’s lifestyle and his attitude and choose to follow the life of drugs, violence and hatred towards its own country and develop a competitive edge to be bigger and badder than the other gangsters. The two kids are rather innocent at first, but as the film progresses we watch their demise into a dark empty place where there is no return.
Kraut lives with his Grandmother, while Pinki lives with his father, who was forced to retire from the army after 30 years – never having been involved in a war, which only began after he was retired. He is a bitter man, but still patriotic and loves his country regardless of its actions, and of its treatment of its own. This is the key underpinning of the attitude during the war, and cements itself as the benchmark of how people felt at the time. The Director does well in providing a gritty darkness to the behaviour – patriotism & racism intertwined as one, indistinguishable from each other.
Over the five year period of both the war, and the town in Belgrade, we watch as propaganda rears its head attempting to boost the hope in the face of adversity. The hate towards America, its neighbours, and the rest of the world is very much prominent. As the people in the town get on with their lives, they are bombarded with the reality of no hope and no future and thus live a life of violence perpetuated by violence. Hope comes in the form of robberies, drugs, and sex.
Dickie becomes a smack head, along with his trashy girlfriend, eventually leading to his demise and losing the respect of the two kids. The two kids learn from Dickie’s mistakes and choose to work together, hoping to make a reputation for themselves in the process – which leads them on to a television appearance on the TV show run by Lidija.
If you are the sensitive, politically correct type of film viewer, then The Wounds will probably piss you off. It is racist at points, but only reflecting what the Serbs felt at the time
Do not assume this a single trip down darkness, it does have it’s moments of humour – as Dickie offers to teach the kids how to fuck by using his girlfriend as a demonstration, he starts to “heat the oven” in doing so, he makes his girlfriend uncomfortable, who subsequently stabs him in the shoulder – surprisingly this turns him on, and endears him further to his girlfriend. The humour is dark, and it is sporadic, but it is welcome as without it the movie would be just too dark for most to stomach, thus reducing the audience (if any I suppose).
The Wounds is not a gentle movie – we watch as the three kids fuck an ugly whore, unfortunately Dijibola can’t get his up and thus Dickie ties an ice-lolly stick with a piece of string to Dijibola’s cock, and then pressures him to fucking the prostitute – it’s quite brutal but at the same time amusing. Another scene where the grandmother first gets high on weed talking about how the Ushastis chased her in an attempt to kill her, and then eventually at a later stage we watch as she lines cocaine resulting in some bizarre scenes and some rather taboo scripting on the part of Pinki – that is, it’s taboo if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing!
This is not the greatest foreign film made, nor does it really manage to justify the hate the Serbs feel, but it is a well structured, well directed and well scripted violent drama. A snapshot of what was felt, and perhaps what is still being felt in Serbia – and a movie provided from a Serbian perspective instead of a Hollywood slant. As the first Serbian made film I have watched, it was surprisingly well crafted and a gripping watch.
Verdict: Dark, violent, sadistic, patriotic, uncompromising – watch with an open mind.