Why are there people defending "A Serbian Film"?

wleen · 2023-06-12T22:27:52+00:00

Fine, I'll try one last time. Most of this will be copied from some of the comments I made years ago:

If you're familiar with the context and specifically with the works of this guy, the shock factor of A Serbian Film becomes much more transparent.

The writer/director I've linked is behind massively popular Serbian TV shows in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Namely, these shows are:

A Better Life (a wacky show about a bickering family going through financial problems where everything works out in the end).
Happy Folks (a wacky show about a bickering family going through financial problems where everything works out in the end).
Family Treasure (a wacky show about a bickering family going through financial problems where everything works out in the end).
The Dollars are Comming (a wacky show about a bickering family going through financial problems where everything works out in the end).

That's the machine ASF is raging against. Its message falls flat if you didn't have to live through endless reruns of the braindead shit in the era when the internet was not ubiquitous. I'm guessing that by making ASF as transgressive as possible, Spasojević wanted to make sure his message was heard loud and clear. Instead, the sheer bizarre factor of the violence and morbidity took away the full attention. Could he have made the movie without kicking it up to eleven with the gross stuff? Certainly. Is it understandable he choose to stick with excessiveness? Also certainly.

What I'm trying to say is that it's fair to say that A Serbian Film is a bad movie. That's not a hard position to defend. However, it's not fair to say it's bad because it's pointless. The subtext is so painfully apparent that the movie is basically trying to violate you with its point. Literally - the final rape scene (feels really weird to write this) is dubbed by the bad guy as "one happy family".

The director used this as a shield to defend him doing whatever he wants in the movie

This is what Spasojević was accused of the most in Serbian media (and let me tell you, ASF was scandalous back when it appeared). It's a fair assumption, given how he has often shifted from explaining ASF in broad anti-government remarks to the more specific ones, like the one I've mentioned.

Then again, it's just an assumption, because he never stuck with a solid explanation of the film. This could be explained by the fact that ASF was an unexpected international success and Spasojević was struggling to provide relatable context to foreign audiences.

Whether taken at face value or with context, ASF definitely is exploitative in its approach. Anything you take from it stems from personal taste and the trust in the director's intentions, which are, admittedly, flimsy.

Oh, and one "small" additional note - the writer of ASF is Aleksandar Radivojević. The man is a playwright by education, but he became known as a critic and, primarily, a TV host. If you're from Serbia and into any kind of transgressive cinema, whether it's Peckinpah, Waters, or much more extreme stuff - you know who Radivojević is. Along with Nenad Bekvalac, he was the host of a TV show called Shock Corridor (named after the movie) - a show analyzing marginalized and transgressive cinema. Radivojević was the key force behind ASF. I would say his intention was definitely the one I described in the opening paragraph, and this was his moment of unleashing all the shit he's seen (from all directions) throughout the years. However, it was Spasojević who came into the spotlight when ASF hit international markets. A new narrative was constructed around the film, one that is mismatched with the actual content, and which is discussed here with even less meaning. I'm not sure what Radivojević has said about ASF in recent years, but the noise has long died down, and I'm guessing he never anticipated this level of attention.

TScottFitzgerald · 2023-06-12T18:30:17+00:00

Honestly, the movie was so over the top that I just started laughing midway through. I mean the guy has a huge prosthetic cock that he uses as a weapon to bludgeon another dude in the head. And then that ending - I mean it's like the ultimate shaggy dog story turned up to 111.

So I guess if you want a defense that's the angle I can offer - it's trying so hard to be shocking that it actually fails and becomes comedic, and looking into the author and his statements it's clearly a protest movie against Serbian and European cinema/industry. So if you're watching it in a meta way, without trying to "figure it out" or look for some meaning, it can have some sort of a trash movie value.

And even the "deeper meaning" isn't that deep at all - yeah guess what it's a critique of post-war Balkans and whatever, that's the most surface level analysis you could do so I don't agree with those people either.

yourfavfr1end · 2023-06-12T21:17:19+00:00

I read some interviews from the director, can’t find them now but Wikipedia goes over it, and he explained it as that when he was trying to make movies, the EU financiers only wanted to fund stuff that showed the hardships of Serbian life in wake of the war. The film is then a meta commentary not entirely or even mostly on Serbia itself but on how the industry/politics shapes perceptions of impoverished countries. I see it as sort of a “this is exactly what you asked for” type deal.

easpameasa · 2023-06-12T19:39:05+00:00

I think the biggest problem with A Serbian Film is that it very much left it’s intended audience when edgy dickheads found it. It puts you in totally the wrong headspace and absolutely guarantees a negative response.

Imagine going into Salo expecting The Human Centipede and only vaguely remembering Italian history. You’re absolutely going to have a ~~bad~~ even worse time with it without the very important context of Pasolinis life. And people still hate it even when they do know what they’re getting into.

People campaigned for half a century to get Vase de Noces a proper release, coz it was the art crowd who found it. Had the Sick Fuck Brigade found it we’d still be watching grainy 240, virus riddled rips of it from limewire.

OrangeSundays19 · 2023-06-12T18:06:35+00:00

I've read both sides. I'm right in the middle. As a shock communication of the depravity and hollowness of the Bosnian War, it's something. I just think there are better films that address this and I think the film goes too gleefully full on exploitation to be taken as "A R T".
I just don't think it's that good, but it is properly messed up in about a thousand ways.

sofarsoblue · 2023-06-12T18:55:25+00:00

With all due respect to Serbia I’m sure there’s a better metaphor for whatever social historical scars permeating that country than to have a new born baby raped on screen.

At that point you forfeit any intelligent argument because you have about as much grace as an edgy teenager writing death metal lyrics. And if there is any commentary in the film it gets lost in the gore and splatter; tasteless trash end of.

Ribtin · 2023-06-12T19:31:47+00:00

What message is it even really trying to portray?

The hint is in the title. It's called "A Serbian Film", as it tells the story of Serbia and how the population has been raped and murdered and conned into raping and murdering each other and fucked over again and again and again. Men, women, and children, all fucked. And even after their death, they are still getting fucked.

Supposedly.

Sopranosfan99 · 2023-06-12T22:53:34+00:00

I think it’s palpable cause unlike most exploitation films, it’s got a bigger budget, better framework and acting that rises above mediocre. I do think it’s got something to say about censorship and the human condition but it’s definitely something you got to dig for. I much preferred the first forty minutes or so where we focused on the main character, his family and the struggle of transitioning into a normal life. Could have been a very effective character study or drama about life in Serbia. I’m not a fan of the second half of the film, in some ways it works but it’s definitely laying on thick the depravity. A more satirical edge or offscreen suggestions of what was happening would have made a more effective allegory in my opinion.

ZakTSK · 2023-06-12T19:23:54+00:00

I liked it. It's clearly not glorifying anything it shows, and it's one of the most tragic and dark stories I've ever witnessed. I only needed to watch it once, I'll likely never watch it again.

It certainly has done it's job as art, as it's still being talked about today. As a nonserbain, though, there are some parts of the message that may be lost on me as I originally thought it was a commentary on their porn industry and the hardships of life in Serbia.

xandfan · 2023-06-13T01:58:42+00:00

It definitely gave me vibes of "I wanted to make an edgy movie and have to dress that up in the idea that there's a deeper meaning behind it all so people don't think I just made an extreme exploitation film". Now I'm well aware of the supposed meaning behind it, the history it allegedly refers to and all of that. I have also read many people try to justify the movie so I get it. Even with all that there is something about the presentation itself just feels like an edge lords journal put on film as pristinely as possible for maximum impact... sadly it just ends up feeling like it's trying too hard and some of the edgier parts come off as goofy.

Case in point, I spotted that other people admit to laughing during this film and I did too. Specifically, my laughter came during the Newborn scene because I swear I saw a seam on the doll arm and could only picture the actor dry-humping a betsy-wetsy doll which made everything stupid and the film never pulled me back in. It can't pull any audience back in once it loses them because the try-hard nature of it is so intense that it overpowers any possible meaning it has. If the message was meant to be there from the beginning it's a message badly conveyed, I would believe it more if the 'message' was just justification by a director wanting to get noticed (Cos if he wanted to get noticed, it worked... the film is 13 years old and still talked about despite the director making nothing else since then beyond one segment in the ABC's of Death)

BenSlice0 · 2023-06-13T16:47:38+00:00

Not a particular fan of the film but I just want to push back a bit on exploitation films needing a “point” for their content. This ends up often being the case, but the oft graphic nature of the genre can in and of itself be the “point”.

HeIsTheOneTrueKing · 2023-06-12T22:01:50+00:00

If A Serbian Film was in any way satirical, I am sure I would have picked up on it when watching it, I just think it was a shit film but I fully support the right of any film makers to be as graphic as they like.

I actually find it quite alarming that I live in a more prudish, frightened society now than I did growing up in the 80's. No-one has a 'right' to never be offended but this enduring determination by studios and distributors to self-censor has meant that all horror movies can only be about the mental state of female characters now and anything remotely 'disturbing' get's one-starred by the media who are also determined never to be seen praising anything remotely offensive.

But yeah, Serbian Film is shit. I have a lot of sick shit in my dvd collection but Serbian Film is too mediocre to even warrant a place in my collection which even I would admit is packed with mediocre, unwatchable crap.

Folsomdsf · 2023-06-13T18:01:23+00:00

Art is meant to make you feel something and talk about it. If it weren't the way it was, would you have seen it, talked about it, or made a post on reddit? No.

That's the entire thing all of it covered.

Street_Historian_371 · 2023-06-14T02:32:31+00:00

I'm a huge horror fan to a point of seriously studying some of the horror (and giallo) directors, I have loved horror since I was in late childhood, middle-school age (10 or 11) and I refuse to watch A Serbian Film.

Here's the deal - if you're a hardcore enough horror fan for enough decades you'll realize there's three type of horror fans:

1) Popcorn Jump Scare Fans - These people generally only watch big budget horror releases in the theater as a social events or are only focused on horror around Halloween. They make up a large percentage of the profits that the horror industry makes, because they're an easy sell on sequels, remakes and big budget "jump scare" flicks.

2) Serious Horror Fans - These people have very particular kinds of horror they prefer, whether it's haunted house or possession or found footage or slasher or "slow burn" these people usually have horror as part of their adult personality. I'm one of those people, I like supernatural and 1970s horror in general, and I know we're a diverse group of reasonable, relatively "normal" people who might like to dress up in goth clothes or decorate our houses crazy on Halloween or who do ghost tours or who are simply quiet collectors of those atmospheric slow burn films. We're a fairly harmless bunch, we're your neighbors, the parents of children, or the rescuers of stray animals, we're just creative, eccentric people who like horror.

3) The Scary People - These people are legitimately ill. They get off on slashers and giallos because they want to see women killed. Or they put themselves through horror marathons of scarier and more violent horror, and they openly admit it's because they "feel dead inside" or can't be scared. These people probably have low empathy personality issues like sociopathy, narcissism, even psychopathy, in best case scenario they're maybe borderline. I'm not saying they're all potential serial killers, but these people are legit not normal, they're the small percentage of horror fans the "video nasties" types warned you about. They're hounds for A Serbian Film.

digital_organism · 2023-06-14T05:50:10+00:00

There's a point at which doing is in itself meaning in societies where censorship/corruption runs rampant.

People making films as a visceral reaction to the corruption and injustices of society was far more frequent in previous decades with movies like Luis Buñuel‎'s The Exterminating Angel (1962), Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe (1973), Dušan Makavejev's Sweet Movie (1974), Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo (1975) etc. In more recent times we have films like Ming-liang Tsai's The Wayward Cloud (2005) and Mathey Barney's River of Fundament (2014) but they are few and far between and so audiences as a whole have become less accustomed to seeing and interpreting extreme metaphor as a literal reaction to the horrors of real life.

The main issue with A Serbian film however, unlike the examples I have listed, is that it's just not very good. The metaphor is flat and one dimensional. As you stated the film with all its implied meaning fails to actually manifest a true political statement and I personally believe a lot of the justification came after all the attention not before.

I can objectively understand the justification of creating something so shocking to prove a point but this film is aiming for notoriety not revolution. I can watch people eating shit knowing exactly what the filmmakers are saying about the nature of power and corruption because it's being explored and dissected. Watching a guy in A Serbian Film rape a baby just because its the worst thing you can do is not the same.

(side-note you can find the "baby scene" all over the internet as a stand alone video proving that people are missing the "point" of any context that is supposedly behind it. No one is jerking off at home to Passolini's shit eaters)

I once had a friend in film school who used to say "I want to be the first person to put a baby in a microwave". He was always trying to think up the next big horror shock scene. ASF is a film by people like this for people like this with a very easy target and so all intellectualism works well enough after the fact but it by no means makes ASF great or even good.

Takeshi Miike can create a vile piece of smut like Visitor Q (2001) that can also unironically be called a masterpiece (at least by me) because of the multi dimensional characters and overall approach to film making. A family of depraved horrible people all learning to love and accept each other by sharing their most horrible and darkest desires is infinitely relatable and that's why so many people "get" what that film is about.

Pascal Laugier's Martyrs (2008) is another example of filmmakers understanding the social and political reasons behind showing extreme content. This film is a modern classic because they challenge their audiences intellectually.

Gaspare Noe's Love (3D) (2015) has a POV shot of a penis ejaculating all over the camera lens (in 3D) and that my friends is how you properly do sexual gratuity and deviance as an artistic political statement, not simply showing horrible events and then saying "yeah life is horrible".

TLDR this movie would be better if the dude literally just ejaculated all over the audience.

-Dogdin · 2023-06-13T03:39:59+00:00

I understand the "message" of this movie, but I did not care for the execution. Plenty of bad movies have messages. That doesn't make them any less bad.

I like horror mixed with shock. However, I was barely scared when watching this movie. Probably because I didn't care for any of the characters. I barely remember any traits of the main protagonist.

eshen93 · 2023-06-13T12:27:06+00:00

It used to be that governments would censor media that it deemed too obscene, but now we have people advocating against freedom of speech. Why does a piece of media have to operate according to your own moral standards?

Over the years since A Serbian Film's release it seems obvious that movies are becoming more and more sanitized, made to appeal to as many people as possible while taking as few risks as possible. Surely there are movies that are being released that are more catered towards your own moral standards these days, watch those instead.

throwawaynotfortoday · 2023-06-12T23:52:32+00:00

I feel the same about Salò. I feel like people use the pseudo-political subtext to excuse the content. The filmmaker could have made the same point without the graphic content, and he chose to emphasize the graphic content. And there is always a gallery of intellectuals preparing themselves to defend it.

masksnjunk · 2023-06-13T05:09:53+00:00

I think people often miss that the film is satire tackling many political and potentially history cultural issues that would be more familiar to the people of that region.

But the greatest satirical aspect of the film is that it essentially pokes fun at horror audiences who are constantly seeking out deeper and darker films to satiate their horror appetite with no reasonable boundaries in sight. This seems to have been made perfectly to push boundaries of viewers while pointing out the absurd nature of the their journey for disturbing material.

Essentially painting the audience in the same light as the producers who are paying for such terrible entertainment/abuse to be done to these characters. We are the same in a way and the fact that it has such a reputation only draws in more of the types of blood thirsty horror fanatics that it's commenting on.

I don't love the movie but I love how artfully and hilariously the satire is pulled off.

HornyOnMain2000 · 2023-06-12T20:22:41+00:00

The intent and meaning of the movie was to make a simple commentary regarding the censorship in its country as well as how violence shapes people. Overall I quite like it. Making the movie overly graphic and violence ads to the point in the way it is portrayed and censored in media.

I think the main reason why you (and many others, including myself) feel this way it's because of the ending. That final moment is so over the top and ridiculous that undermines the serious, dark and depressing moment of the family being broken beyond repair leading to their deaths.

Had the film ended like that it would've been perfect.

I'm looking forward to A Serbian Documentary.

god4rd · 2023-06-12T19:04:54+00:00

Sensationalist garbage; zero substance; shock-factor crudeness; vulgar and flashy false art; pseudo-critical. People who love this movie or defend it from criticism are pseudo-intellectual snobs who say "I understand art that you don't understand" but are actually voyeurs of senseless violence.

bong-water · 2023-06-12T21:59:28+00:00

It's absurd and stupid. It's too ridiculous for me to be offended and even then, it's not real. It's a shock value film. It did it's job if you're upset. I'm a big exploitation film fan, and I just thought it was a poorly made, overdone exploitation film. They wanted to push barriers but I doing so lost any semblance of realism. It's not worth being upset about and it's not worth praising. I found it to be mildly entertaining and that's about it. Whether there was a deeper meaning or not to the film, I didn't get anything from it other than that.

televisionceo · 2023-06-12T23:35:04+00:00

I think it brought one of the most emotial scene I've seen with he suicide at the end. Only for that I think this movie has merit. The final scene with the camera though was idiotic and cliche. It brought the whole thing down a notch

-hollymolly · 2023-06-13T19:56:13+00:00

Feel the same way about "I saw the Devil"

We don't get to hear the victims'perspectives, it is just a full fledged revenge story without, entirely unconcerned by the trauma that many real life victims of sexual assault suffer --- which I somehow try to rationalise given the context of time (2010) and the place (Korea), but still, how could you not have one ounce of sympathy for them?

Also, the protagonist would arrive after all the victims would suffer the morbidity, and no not because there were any hurdles, he just enjoyed the delight of catching the antagonist in his crimes.

Also, the scenes were pretty long and explicit, it was as if, it rendered the people that enjoy that kinda content.

bobbyOrrMan · 2023-06-18T15:22:46+00:00

You can get real life lessons out of ANY movie.

Fantasia can make you understand the entirety of human civilization if you watch it with the right mindset. But I agree, some movies are just nasty and if they get you thinking its probably a coincidence.

Olivebuddiesforlife · 2023-06-27T03:38:55+00:00

Its my comfort film, along with Boogie Nights.

So, it is smart satire on exploitation, and that is that.

You can apply it to TV, showbiz, military industrial complex, education, geopolitics, social media, advertising, business, jobs, housing, even say Starbucks.

It turns the knob up to a 100 and stands by it, and more beautifully, the ending shot with “the director with the camera focussed on the dead family” is just pure clap worthy moment, for - drives the message home stronger and louder.

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