"Underground" and the Yugoslav War

Underground

On the eve of departure, I went to the cinema near the Palace of Versailles to watch Emile Kusturica’s "Underground". I appreciate the previous movies made by this Bosnian from Sarajevo, such as "Song of the Wanderers" and "Arizona Dream". On the one hand, their imagination is not simply elegant, but flying freely. The images and shots are so tight and rhythmic that they often slowly become rich scenes with oriental colors (this makes the movie picture more open). ); On the other hand, in the face of the rapid picture switching in the movie, I always feel that something is missing, such as a connection with the earth, the country, and the world. Therefore, the entire imagination given by the picture quickly shattered and turned into a delusion of filling the eyeballs. I always want to be deeply touching, rather than blogging, or almost touching. This will move my heart most strongly, linger in my mind, and continue.

The story of "Underground" (almost) captured my heart, and for the first time I was moved by Kusturica's film. The pure narrative technique finally becomes a kind of narrative impact, because a genius with dreams, an incomparable genius closely connects himself with an exact world, including history-with the former Yugoslavia. It used to be the hometown of this young director. At the end of the movie, there is a grand scene. The civil war is full of smoke. One of the protagonists has been searching for his son who disappeared on the Danube River in Belgrade for many years. He shuttles in the smoke of war while constantly shouting for the missing. Son, while sending a roaring command: "Fire!" Isn't it a kind of shock-a Shakespearean shock that has repeatedly matched the shock of the Marx brothers? ——In the criticism of "Underground", I think there are so many things that are stupid or unkind. Not only after "Underground" was released in Cannes, Alain Finkelkraut, one of the modern French philosophers, wrote an article in Le Monde accusing Kusturica's film of promoting terrorism and engaging in pro-Serbian propaganda. . Finkelkraut has not seen this movie. Since the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia, he has been clamoring inexplicably for Croatia to establish an independent state. And just a few days ago, another modern French philosopher André Glucksman sneered in a grotesque way in "Liberation," he claimed to have seen this movie! And congratulate Kusturica, because this is the liquidation of Serbian terrorist communism. Unlike the Germans, this kind of communism has not learned from its historical crimes at all-who would see such a thing in the movie "Underground"? What did they see? What are they paying attention to? Another film critic wrote an article in the German "Time", changing his usual gentle style, thinking that Kusturica's films are full of anger, resentment, and even "revenge" complexes. After all, this is not the case: The film "Underground" came out, succeeded, existed, and had an impact. I have seen it all because of sadness, pain, and strong love; even if it is rough and exaggerated. Where, that is also part of it-all this finally highlights a keen eye for the history of another Yugoslavia, sometimes even a foreseeable eye, or something simple and fairy tale. I saw a festive ending on this small island off the mainland. There, the stupid guy in the movie was suddenly no longer mad, and he was not stupid at all. He spoke in an orderly manner, like a fairy tale teller, facing the audience, and whispered: "Once upon a time,

Of course, the worst accusations against Kusturica’s films so far appeared in Le Monde. This was originally one of my favorite newspapers. Under the same serious and elegant guise of the past-almost no pictures can be seen, all are dense and almost official columns. In the past few years, it has deviated from its almost overly serious subjective style, and has become a concealed and provocative gossip newspaper, and not only in special circumstances. The thing is not only that. For example, the news about President Mitterrand's illness that year, under the guise of news, spread the news one after another before the expiration of the president's term, lest people might not die. This may be in time, but it is definitely not in line with the reality at the time. This newspaper no longer pays attention to its subject, no longer specializes in reporting, let alone elegant style, just blindly exaggerate-make it an object of public attention. For this new orientation, it is very typical to adopt the method, from the very beginning, judging the characteristics of the characters based on their appearance, which was unimaginable in Le Monde before. But now, they directly label the characters in the title of the report, for example: originally reporting on an American art photographer, the title is "fascinating forty-year-old woman" (or similar terms)—— It seems that this newspaper's restriction of publishing pictures will produce a completely different kind of image, that is, the image of discourse. There is no doubt that these are images that are not worth taking seriously.

The editorial team of "Le Monde" and Finkelkraut ran into each other in unison, aiming to eliminate the influence of Emil Kusturica and his pro-Serbian or pro-Yugoslavian narcotics, so this master of film critics appeared— —A writer who is clever and meticulous in analysis — the language is full of flaws, and it seems to be manipulative comments. In it, he accused the film of being Baroque in form, that is, just for self-entertainment. In the poor culture column, there is an article written by a woman. As a newspaper reader, I have so far only thought that she was a war correspondent of Le Monde in Yugoslavia, and she was not only prejudiced-in this case, why not? What's more, she has an unforgettable and conscious hatred for everything in Serbia, which permeates her report after report. In the mentioned article, she wants to make it clear that the film Kusturica filmed on Serbian land (and waters) must have received support from local companies and therefore violated the UN’s policy against Serbia and Montenegro. Trade bans or embargo sanctions. Then, she used an overly detailed posture that was close to the highest judge, and at the same time completely superficially meticulously listed all the United Nations resolutions that can be used against the film "Underground", which accounted for about a quarter of the page, sentence by sentence, and appended. Article after article, everything is pedantically arranged, superimposed and connected into a continuous prayer supporting guilt, just like an impeccable, final, and irrevocable reason for judgment-and it is used to imply: only as a product or commodity , Kusturica’s film is fundamentally illegal; his non-Serbian (French and German) "collaborators" are all people who violate the law; this film, at least in the case of embargo duty In the country, it should disappear from the screen and withdraw from the circulation (I am here to be more precise, I am here to gently translate the suggestion of the female war reporter); the film "Underground" has no right to exist, and the film is produced. Both Ren and director Kusturica were vested interests in the war, at least that's it. (For the sake of justice, it is also mentioned here that here, about a month after the publication of this article, Le Monde published a short letter from the reader, in which it politely issued a request not to complain about "this unpleasant "Events" have been entangled-but in the next issue, another female war correspondent published the same report, this time about the current situation of the "Belgrade Red Star" football club. In fact, at least for those who read it verbatim. Said that this is a seamless chain of condemnation, and finally gave a blow: this club-no matter what the international media knows Su Ming-the association with the "notorious bandit and war killer Alcan" has a long history, as the club leader claimed, now there is indeed no sever relationship with this group-otherwise, how could it be a souvenir of the club In addition to the usual team uniforms, ashtrays and other goods in the store, you can always see the "yellow" wedding video of the warmonger Alcan and the "chauvinistic Serbian rock singer Seka"? )

The reason why I have to stay for so long is not so much worthy of Philip Marlowe, but more important (perhaps) secondary scenes and boring word games worthy of the customs police's attention, because in my opinion, the quoted here The way of speaking is almost completely restrained by the tight chain beforehand. The overwhelming reports of the Yugoslav war are very representative, and it has been like this since the beginning of the war. The media is thus held back by a strong rope. --what? Do you want to justify the Serbian crimes committed in Serbia, in Bosnia, Krajina, and Slavonia through a media criticism that ignores this prior reality? -Calmness, patience and fairness. The question, is it just mine? It is more entangled, entangled with many levels or levels of reality. And what I focus on is something that is absolutely complete and realistic, because I want to clarify it. In this, we must make all the chaotic reality forms feel something like a connection. This is because, who knows, where, being on the scene is almost always just being immersed in the (distance) view? Who knows, where people face pure Internet and online browsing only possess knowledge, but there is no real knowledge that can only be acquired through learning, observation and re-learning? If a person does not understand the event, but only knows its image, or the epitome of an image seen in TV news; or, the epitome of the epitome seen in the online world, what exactly does he know?

There are two things that I have been unable to get rid of. It is more difficult than getting rid of those chaotic games. It has been four and a half years since June 1991, when the so-called "Ten Day War" broke out in Slovenia, which started the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Since the first shot-two things: a data and a picture, that is, a photo. One statistic is: Approximately 70 people were killed in the war that started. It can be said that this is not much compared to the 14,000 people who died in the subsequent war. However, almost all the 70 dead were soldiers of the Yugoslav People’s Army. What happened? At that time, the Yugoslav People’s Army was already regarded as the biggest aggressor, and it was far superior in any way. Did it play a very simple game with the few independent forces in Slovenia? (A game?) (Everyone knows the number relationship, but it is strange that it has not entered the world consciousness of course.) So, who is the first to shoot at whom? Also, isn't it because someone issued a clear order that it is absolutely forbidden to fight back? Because they know that no matter what, the two sides are still brother countries in the southern Slavic region, and they insist on sticking to such beliefs or illusions, at least in this respect. As for the photo, I saw it in Time Magazine in the United States: to be precise, it was a group of scattered Slovenians, dressed in strange camouflage uniforms, holding flags and slogans, and that’s it. The newly established republic was proclaimed. In my memory, there are almost no real young people on the screen, or anyway, this group of people has no signs of young people at all. First of all, in my opinion, this group of freedom fighters is more of three. Ten-year-olds, with big bellies, seem to be about to end an outing dedicated to ladies, with flags like an open-air theater. To this day, my initial impression of this photo is still lingering in my mind. Those are some half comic amateur characters, not freedom fighters. It was this group of people. They shot and killed nearly seventy well-equipped but unsuspecting soldiers of the People’s Army. Of course, this may be nonsense—but it also shows how some such glorious reports and pictures have changed or distorted in a recipient.

Similarly, I have also seen subsequent reports of the war, which have become more frequent. Where are the diners who resell or pass on reality: in the news itself, or in the consciousness of the recipient? When the news of the fall of Vukovar came at the end of November 1991, why did I feel the same in the first moment? That night, the stop sign of Stalingrad station of the Paris Metro was rewritten as Vukovar by an angry and excited pedestrian. I see this as such a realistic and sacred behavior, or a perfect combination of artistic and political behavior-but just the next morning, it’s like watching a movie for a while, although it will move people’s hearts. Immediately after the end of the play, this is no longer the case. Later, when I think of movies that are becoming less and less credible (usually Hollywood), I began to wonder how "Stalingrad" and "Vukovar" could be involved. Come together. How could I separate the famous quote of a hateful editorial author of the Frankfurter Zeitung from this incident that is taking place in Eastern Slavonia today. According to this statement, Serbs living in Croatia (including Vukovar and surrounding areas) have always been Yugoslav citizens and have enjoyed the same status as compatriots in Croatia. However, they were suddenly classified as second-class citizens in the constitution of this new country, Croatia, which was established ignoring their wishes. In this way, 600,000 Serbs will be incorporated into a Croatian country without knowing it, and will no longer be under the management of Croatians. They should feel that way, contented and submissive, in the words of a German journalist. In other words, "I should feel that I am a minority (Yes!)! The first reported images of the battle will soon be an image series, or a series of images, some of which are of great concern to myself (always represent "my whole"). These images show the heavily armed Bosnian Serbs, whether they are an army or a skirmisher, especially the skirmishers active in the hills and mountains of Sarajevo, as "enemies of mankind." This is the German writer Hans Magnus. A word that Enzensberg said to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As the war continued, and seeing reports and images from Bosnian Serb detention camps, to a certain extent, I seemed to agree with a Serb patriot, poet, and then opposition Wak ("wolf"). ") Draskovic’s words, due to the massacre in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even Serbs, who have almost never been a murderer in history, at least were not the first murderers, have become a lot of crimes. The nation, a kind of "Cain nation". Faced with another kid who was killed and parked in a morgue in Sarajevo, it was like being left alone in the empty universe, not only once, but not just for a moment-let’s talk about those photos, from Spain. Newspapers, such as the National, are world masters who have amplified and published. According to their self-consciousness, they probably inherited the mantle of Francisco Goya? Therefore, I asked myself, why no one of us here or, preferably there, has come forward after all, and no Serb has come forward by himself and put the person responsible for this, that is, the chief culprit of the Serb in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This Radovan Karadzic, who was said to be the author of nursery rhymes (!) before the war, was killed? Why didn't there be another Stauffenberg or another George Elser!?

Despite this, almost simultaneously with the powerless violent impulse of a participant from a distance, another part of my heart (which of course definitely does not represent me as a whole) is unwilling to believe in this war and the reports about these wars. Are you unwilling to believe it? No, I can't believe it. Because for the so-called world public opinion, in this war, the roles of the attackers and the attacked, the real victims, and the naked perpetrators were determined too quickly and became black and white. And my immediate thought was, how could there be a good ending like this? It is also through a single nation to establish an independent country-if Bosnian Muslims who speak Serbo-Croatian and Serb nationality are to become a nation-on a piece of land, there are two other ethnic groups living there, and they enjoy the same s right! What's more, residents of all three ethnic groups are scattered in various places, not just living together in the multicultural capital, but also different villages, different families, living adjacent to each other, and living in a mixed life. Besides, as a Serb living in Bosnia, to put it mildly, what should I do when you vie for land on my and our land to build a country that does not meet my wish at all? So, who is the aggressor? (See above).

Later, as the situation developed, a few distant observers would feel this way for a long time. When there was a photo of a war victim suddenly and exceptionally added with the legendary text of "Serbs", we looked at it. Is success an error, a typographical error, and an exception that can be ignored anyway? This is because if there are such innocent Serb victims, they can only be in a ratio of 1:1000 according to their rare appearance in world public opinion-that is, if there is a Serb Death, there will be a thousand Muslim deaths. If it involves people killed or slaughtered in a war, which side of the war is the bright side for reporting and photographing? So, in the summer of 1995, with the expulsion of the Serbs from Krajina, how could the two sides of the war change their roles for the first time-although "only" the homeless can be seen, but not The faces of the people who were slaughtered, and used this to imply that "these same people" had driven away another nation before? Isn’t the number of war suspects in the Yugoslav War just announced by the International Tribunal of The Hague exactly the same? ——Forty-seven Serbs, eight Croats, and one Muslim, they may be the subject of the court in The Hague — so it seems that for this party, in order to be justified in form, it is necessary to have One, an absent war criminal, similar to an absent benevolent person before.

But don’t this and that observer from afar fail to notice these pictures of refugees escaping from Krajina? Until this time, those almost insignificant Serb victims usually compare themselves with others in photographs, voices, and texts. Is the great sacrifice of the race very different? Yes, in the previous photos of Serbs and other media that are worth reporting, I feel that these people are indeed "insignificant". Compared with the suffering compatriots of the other two ethnic groups, they are indeed too inconspicuous-these people In any case, it is not uncommon. Although there is no "pretending", they are placed in a posture through observation or reporting perspective-maybe they are really suffering, they are shown as a suffering posture. In the course of the years of war reporting, they may really continue to suffer at the same time, and they may get worse. Obviously, they persuasively made the expressions and gestures hoped by others for the lenses and headsets of those international exposers and reporters. They were mentored, guided and signaled by these people here ("Hi, buddy!"). Who would tell me that I made a mistake, or had a ghost at all, because this is how I really came to observe a photo of a woman clutching a barbed wire in a detention camp and crying, obediently following the international news media. The instructions for shooting outside the barbed wire fence of the detention center, even if the woman lying on the barbed wire shows what the photographer gave her in advance? Maybe, I made a mistake myself, and the diners are in my eyes (the child in the photo is very big, crying loudly, a woman hugging him, his mother? And in the next photo, Appearing in a group of people from a distance, being held by another woman, looking very peaceful, his real mother?)-However, why have I never-at least here, in the "West"-have seen How about such carefully crafted photos of a Serb war victim? Why are there almost no close-up photos of such Serbs? They almost never appeared individually, but always a small group of people, almost all of them appearing on the mid-range or the long-range, which happens to be insignificant. Very different from their fellow victims of the Croats and Muslims, they almost never look straight ahead, looking at the camera painfully, and more often do not look at one side or at the front of their feet, just like some A person who knows he is guilty. Like a foreign tribe? ——Or disdain to put on airs? ——Or too sad about it? In this way, part of me will not protect anyone, let alone condemn it. This will lead-not just me-to such absurd, but at the same time not completely incomprehensible behavior (?), just like a young French writer (whose mother is (Croatian) Patrick Besson’s defense a few months ago, or more precisely described in a pamphlet ("pamphlet"...?) written for the Serbs, is refreshing, no matter How to fall between witty and absurd. The beginning of this pamphlet says that he, Besson, initially viewed the cruelty of war on the same side as all other Western observers. But then one day—the consumer who teased the news so cleverly and the moody Parisian fashionist—was completely tired of such boring reports. Of course, the following words have nothing to do with emotions, only with the author's language and image sensitivity. He deliberately recalled the history of suffering and resistance that Yugoslavia experienced during the Second World War-which has almost disappeared from our memory. Regarding this period of history, we ask those who participated in the war to finally forget it. For generations, Besson enumerated the usual media standards for the current Yugoslavia event, almost continuing the Flaubert-style "form". Clichés on the Internet". Of course, not so much as making people laugh, but as making people cry and shout. To cite just one example, here is a widely spread portrayal of Radovan Karadzic: When you talk about this person, you will naturally think of his career as a psychiatrist, which has become commonplace. This is because as we all know, in Flaubert's opinion, doctors who treat mental patients also have a shadow in their hearts. In addition, no matter where he goes, from Vienna to Paris, his published works will be regularly dubbed the title of "doctor", which is obviously like the one in the film directed by Stanley Kubrick that wants us to "Dr. Strange Love" blown up by the world. As a result, while reading Besson’s pamphlet, I saw another image of this Serb leader in Le Monde, one after another of Epinal paintings, piles after piles. The clichés are put into practice by the language method just mentioned, that is, the so-called serious reproduction of a reality, but there are a bunch of clichés, such as: psychiatrist Karadzic also writes poetry, of course "amateur" , No one will read it, it goes without saying that they are all "more mediocre", and so on. However, such a ridiculous behavior would have such an effect, at least for me: I would love to read this kind of poems by Karadzic—the same, the brides and chauvinist singers about the killer Alcan Seka's empty words also evoked my interest in her songs. A behavior that might be similar in Patrick Besson’s description: After all these preconceived reports, he once met Radovan in Pale

In any case, I think this kind of behavior, or more precisely defensive, or more precisely the reverse action is worth mentioning, but also because they risk losing balance and sense of justice-like Besson for example The perhaps unique small image of Epinal when the Serb defended. He used it to pick up an equally vague stereotype, no different from the people he had borrowed from the pamphlet: he told the soldiers. At the assembly scene, also in Pale, the Bosnian Serb soldiers are completely different from what we know. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with this. From a simple description, these young men show a less elegant appearance, specifically, they are "energetic, happy, and at ease." So I thought that what they showed in them seemed to be comparable to the various praises of the Soviet system by some Western travelers in the 1930s. This might be the danger of such reverse behavior. Of course: when you see every new report with such a group of Serb nationalists, fanatical peasants and paranoia drinking plum brandy, you will see a group of people who are basically on par with it. , Annoying foreign reporters; they gather at a bar at night, instead of plum shochu in their hands, but a spirit made from grapes or something else; or, when you see some reporters writing endlessly When publishing the same articles about Yugoslavia, although you don’t want to use a burning holy fire to cleanse his mouth as you did with the prophet Isaiah, after all, you will look forward to wrapping a nettle cloth on his writing hand. , Is this the behavior of the error loop? What happened here is not just from my suspicion about the major news reports that you are accustomed to, which may be mechanical, but some problems with the matter itself: say that it happened twice at the Markar bazaar in Sarajevo. The attack was really carried out by the Bosnian Serbs. Has it been confirmed? As Bernard Henry-Levy said, he is also a modern philosopher, a philosopher who is more and more everywhere today. Immediately after the attack, he would exaggerate in a ridiculous tone: "Undoubtedly, the Serbs are the culprits of this attack!" There is also a diner-question: the real situation that happened in Dubrovnik what is it then? This ancient and magical town basin or basin town is located on the coast of Dalmatia. Was it really hit by bombing and artillery in the early winter of 1991? Or just-bad enough-to be shelled briefly? Or were the shelled objects located outside the thick walls, the shells missed or bounced? Is intentional,

In the end, I even got to the point where I couldn't help but ask, not only to myself: What does this really have to do with the power dream of the "Greater Serbia"? Even if those in power in Serbia have such a beautiful dream, they probably did not take their destiny in their own hands and make the dream come true easily, right? Or, is it impossible. Here, some legendary grains of sand, a few of them, are just like the ones in the disintegrating empire, not only in the Balkans, but also scattered everywhere, among us. The darkrooms of foreign countries are enlarged into blocks of boulders? (Not long ago, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung began to serialize a series of reports on the four-year civil war in Yugoslavia in chronological order. The subtitle blames the disintegration of the country on the anonymous memo writers of the Serbian Academy of Sciences: "The war in the former Yugoslavia began in the study room/ Scientists have provided ideological support for this great conflict.”) So the result is not so much that it proves that Serbia’s yellow beam dreams that have swallowed up legends and have never condensed into a unified power ideology and politics anywhere. , It is better to say that a "Greater Croatia" appears to be something unparalleled and more real, or something more effective, something more determined and more certain, isn't it? Unlike today’s reports of pre-inquiry, will the history of this war be written differently one day? However, due to the existence of these inquiries, isn't this period of history a final conclusion forever? Has it become final? More precisely, isn't it set in stone? Just like after 1914 and after 1941-in the consciousness of the neighboring countries of Yugoslavia, especially Austria and Germany, the consciousness is immutable, holding on to the same, so waiting for the next outbreak, waiting for the next 1991? Who would rewrite this period of history, even if there are only subtle differences-they certainly might be more conducive to freeing these peoples from opposing dead images?

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