Metastaze

Year of release: 2009
Director: Branko Schmidt
Genre: Drama
Duration: 76 min
Language: Croatian (English subtitles encoded in the film)

So far most movies I posted were (surprisingly -_-) from Japan. This time I have something, different from the usual movies I post. Croatia (where I, sadly, live) isn't really known for its film movies. Now that I think about it we aren't really known for anything. Okay maybe for tourism and Nikola Tesla (but that's debatable). Anyway Metastaze (Metastasis in English) is a surprisingly good movie that got out this year.

The story follows 4 friends from Zagreb. A hooligan (Krpa), alcoholic (Kizo), junkie (Dejo), and ex junkie (Filip). 4 types of people that are a very big part of our late post-war society. The ex-junkie Filip returns from Spain after some time of healing from drugs. He comes home and finds the same old story. Overprotective mother who allows too much and over strict father who was raised by the Communist regime (while secretly being a Croatian patriot which was against the law then) both telling him to get a decent job and start living. Of course though like many people here he will never get a job. He just doesn't care nor has any ambition so he starts to seek refuge in the delusion that his friends are having. They also don't have jobs, one is beating his wife and spends the whole day causing trouble, one is trafficking/taking drugs from Bosnia and one is just, well, drunk all the time. Basically everything is sliding down, fast.

All in all the story is not so hard to follow, the plot is simple, it's the details that matter. First and above all this a social commentary about life in Zagreb and Croatia in general. It feels like the director is mocking the general opinion of the government that the country got out of the dark ages and that we are now a European country. This movie proves just the opposite. A lot of people are still tied to their nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination and ignorant beliefs. People are falling apart with no jobs and ambition. There's a big gap between the rich and the poor. But is the movie then a picture of reality or overblown imagination? Well I think it's very accurate. I can safely say that I met people that are like characters in the movie and I saw similar situations happening.

So is it worth to watch this movie? I guess it is. I liked it, it's very real and direct. Some people might not understand it because things work differently where they live but I guess they can still watch it out of curiosity. Also a lot of swearing words were not translated and the swearing is abundant here (just like in reality). It's hard to translate them so I won't try because they would not make any sense to you (pička ti materina = your mothers cunt, direct translation :S).

Links:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

You need HJ Split to patch this back into one file.