This movie, filmed after a classic Croatian novel of the same name, tells more about Croatian politics and nationalist ideology in the year 1991 than about the novel it supposedly adapts.
The novel describes the stereotyped Slavonian anti-hero who comes back from prison for killing his own father. His extremely hot blood and love of women, alcohol and Gypsy music, the passions he tries to gain control over, but fails and ends up as a poor farmhand, are brilliantly depicted.
The film claims to adapt this novel of human passion, but in fact tells another tale. Instead of showing us the protagonist's drunken need to feel, we see more than 100 minutes of gloom and doom in which even a wedding looks like a funeral. 20th century has begun, you know, and poor, naive Croats are accepting the friendship of Serbs who call them brothers, without knowing what they are really up to. (A scene about just that has been shamelessly inserted into the movie even though it doesn't appear in the novel).
If you want the real story of Djuka Begović, who frantically seeks wild emotion while losing his daughter, money, and land, read the novel. Only if you enjoy cheap political tales from early 1990's will you like this film.
The novel describes the stereotyped Slavonian anti-hero who comes back from prison for killing his own father. His extremely hot blood and love of women, alcohol and Gypsy music, the passions he tries to gain control over, but fails and ends up as a poor farmhand, are brilliantly depicted.
The film claims to adapt this novel of human passion, but in fact tells another tale. Instead of showing us the protagonist's drunken need to feel, we see more than 100 minutes of gloom and doom in which even a wedding looks like a funeral. 20th century has begun, you know, and poor, naive Croats are accepting the friendship of Serbs who call them brothers, without knowing what they are really up to. (A scene about just that has been shamelessly inserted into the movie even though it doesn't appear in the novel).
If you want the real story of Djuka Begović, who frantically seeks wild emotion while losing his daughter, money, and land, read the novel. Only if you enjoy cheap political tales from early 1990's will you like this film.
