STUDIES AND RESEARCH
Motives in Dejan Šorak’s Films
The work of Dejan Šorak (1954)
connects two apparently different periods: the eighties
and the nineties. The eighties were the period of growing
discomfort in the former Yugoslavia, while the nineties
were the period of Croatia’s struggle for its independence.
The social context of these periods can be very clearly,
if indirectly, read in Šorak’s work. Šorak’s first long
meter The Little Train Robbery (1984) refers to
the period of deconstruction of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy
and the creation of the first south-Slavenian state and
comments on the inner disproportions of such society.
Social
context is even more evident in the film An Officer
with a Rose (1987). Although the story takes place
immediately after World War II, the film is not only an
illustration of doubts and anxieties that were characteristic
of the post-war years, it is also the illustration of the
period it was filmed in. A deeper view into the social
context of the film reveals three protagonists who are
the personifications of three different social codes that
formed after the war, which also manifested themselves
in the second half of the eighties. The military, civic
society and provincial people are distinctly separated
with no possibility of ever really coming together.
In
the film Blood Drinkers (1989), evil is shown as
a constant peril hanging over every society, which is,
on the other hand, only partly aware of its presence. The
film The Time of Warriors (1991), shot on the eve
of the homeland war already anticipated the upcoming struggle,
while Garcia (1999) dealt with the weaknesses of
the society in which the film was made and with a past
too troublesome to be completely revealed.
Confrontation
with the past represents a confrontation with the toilsome
past of the newborn society still struggling and taking
shape. Šorak’s characters display little optimism. They
stoically endure the situation they are in accepting it
as a matter of fact they cannot change. They are aware
that one cannot escape one’s destiny; their only goal is
to complete their struggle.
Dejan Šorak is a traditional author who
abhors any sort of extreme form of film recording, while
the prevailing characteristic of his work is its narrativity.
His primary aim is to direct the viewers’ attention towards
the protagonists and their clean-cut stories. Film narrative
is the basis of the structure of his works. Avoiding subjectivity,
he points our attention to what can be seen as ’objective’.
Although it may seem that he shows only the
’obvious’, his directorial handwriting is filling the work
with the ’hidden’, i. e. what the viewers will perceive
but will not be able to read immediately. Indeed, he achieved
best effects in his work playing with perception.
Tomislav Čegir |
