Sveti Georgije ubiva azdahu

Even though I have never complied with Srdjan Dragojevic's work, I got to say I do respect his movies. This one is not an exception. Pretty good directing on exceptional story made by grandmaster of European Cinema - Dusan Kovacevic. I do not agree with Srdjan's mish-mash concept of traditional Serbian black humor notes served on the movie plate with fast-mood Hollywood style. It is not digestive for Western or Serbian audience neither. Except these, there is an obvious problem with bad acting of some characters in this movie. For example, there is a great contrast between acting of the female and male lead: while Natasa Janjic shows pretty solid acting, Milutin Milosevic cannot act and should change the profession. Still, great directing develops Dostoevsky's analysis of characters and bitter Slavic comprehension of reality. Great role of Laza Ristovski, I am sending him all my compliments. So, only for that reason, we might say that this movie is very worth of watching. And that is not the only reason: Outstanding story on Serbia is told by one of the Serbs with extraordinary view and sane mind . As a Serb, maybe you should see this film to understand why did blind people led us to war, why the people who were able to see shot our own cross that we had sworn to and why is easier for us to deal with death than with life. As everybody else but Serbian, you should see this film to understand why only few million people in this world can call themselves the Serbs.

A very bizarre story, told in a most unpersuasive manner. An unpleasant experience that offers nothing to the viewer in terms of emotional satisfaction. It is bizarre and unpleasant from beginning to end. The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the director is a mediocre creator of cheap humour and exploitation, who, I guess, thought it was his chance to do something genuinely artistic. Well, he only proved he had no talent for filmmaking. Avoid this film, it is an utterly empty experience.

The movie is not near as good as you might think reading nice reviews. I watched it, and i must say it was so slow, that i had to speed it up a little in some parts. The story about a love triangle between 2 soldiers and a lady is not really convincing, characters are more like puppets tied in their stereotypical roles without real space to develop. The one is always mysteriously silent, and stubborn, and that's all he is, and nothing else. Other is, deeply loving, honest, old fashioned man, and nothing more than that. It is hard to bring much more with such limited space. There is also a lot of theatrical, unrealistic dialogs and uber-macho scenes. Looks a little bit like a FIrst world war fairy tale, or it was planned to be that way but had stuck on the way in the swamp of boredom. It is bad very much in the way as Charleston for Ognjenka.

Srdjan Dragojevic is famous in his spitting on Serbia and Serbian people. Brave and winning Serbian army was show as bunch of junkies and homeless like characters. Irony is that government of Serbia finance this garbage of movie. Leftist and defeated communists hate Serbian history and everything Serbian and this is one of those examples. Politics is everywhere, even in this. There is also couple of examples like ''Serbian movie'' , ''Senke nad Balkanom'' or ''Nemanjici Radjanje kraljevine''. Same political establishment rules country for decades and everything opposite of common sense.

I was very impressed with how this story was told, it is plain, crude but real. This is what Serbia looked like at the dawn of 20th century. I understand the language so it is much easier to get the full story and understand the humor than it is to watch this with English subtitles. Many wars, suffering and simple life's are well shown in this movie. For me scenes of Serbian Captain swearing in the battle field and his crazy personalty was the best part of this movie. I watched it twice, it was that good. If you understand the humor it is even better (it is dark humor). At the end I will remember this movie as one of the better Serbian war movies.