review A frame with faces of two children who sit at the table and blow candles. This is one of the opening scenes of Inferno by Vinko Möderndorfer, the film where hope fades away along with the light of candles. It’s not the first time the director faces perplexing social problems. Married couple with the preschool children would like to lead a life with no frills. There is a lot of love, but... not enough money. Every day poses a threat of being evicted. The film deals with the last 25 years when many factories in Slovenia became privatised and the struggle with capitalism began. It gets deeper, darker and more tragic with time. The situation is similar to the succeeding levels of Dante’s hell in the Divine Comedy, from which the motto of the story was taken. We could describe this movie as a drama or even a “social horror”, but the director’s statement is: “it’s just a simple story about an unemployed family”. Indeed, it is. But simple, doesn’t mean without dramatic events. The form of the film is really impressive, it was considered very carefully. There are two main spaces – domestic and industrial, which is exactly the centre of hell. Divided in a very clarified way, shots from the flat are held on muted and cold colours, while the office is intensely red and full of socrealist symbols like a huge painting of workers. The shots of Marx and Lenin busts are presented with an obscure staircase in the background, which is reached only by the rays of light. We can observe the main character pacing the stairs as he steps into an infernal abyss. Monumental buildings of the national institutions intensify the feeling
ER: Wladimir lived at times, when the trade union and protests were important and could change something. He believes that as soon as he organizes a press conference to tell the media about his situation, his life will change in some mysterious way. But this system of thinking is passive which makes him a tragic character. The protests shown in the film were very convincing. Was it hard to shoot them? ER: We shot real protests in Slovenia. After that, there were a lot of negative articles in the newspapers, some even suggested cancelling the shootings. Fortunately, we managed to finish our story. Your film shows the EU as a negative institution. What do you think about it? VM: Establishing EU was a very good idea, but nowadays membership is not very beneficial for countries like Poland, Slovenia, Croatia. Actually, Eastern Europe works for Central Europe. The ending of the film leaves us with a question – an innocent young man gets killed. It could be the beginning of a world-changing revolution.
of him being cornered, the same effect is achieved by combining entrapping images taken by street cameras with the traditional ones. The point is that we don’t know exactly who is looking through those cameras. For sure, someone (or something) who watches is in power. In this way, the represented world could be an accurate ilustration of Panopticon – an unusual prison invented by Jeremy Bentham and carefully described by Michel Foucault. The story is full of tension and emotions. The characters live in hard and dark times, so they have to be strong and desperate. What’s striking for the viewer, is that the plot focuses mainly on the negative effects of the capitalist policy and EU membership. There are scenes which are so intrusive that can become unbearable, such as suffering of the main character lost in plenty of problems with the EU flag waving in the background. The film isn’t perfect. On the one hand, many important symbols were really helpful in recognizing the contexts of the story, but on the other there were too rough in some moments. Anyway, it’s a realy strong voice which poses the rhetorical question about the future of Europe. Maybe, it tells us more about our times than we would like to know. Especially, when we consider another title of this festival, Field of Dogs by Lech Majewski, that also took inspiration from Dante and his murk vision of life after death. And if we don’t change anything, we are on the straight way to hell.
There could be a lot of blood on the streets, probably a lot of innocent people would die. So we should find other solutions to change the current situation. The vision of the world in Inferno is dark and upsetting. Is there any hope? VM: Hope is in revolutions [laughs]. Actually, I think that our global situation is very bad, but you can find positive elements in my film, too. The main character is a good example. He is very strong, he fights, ready for everything to save his children and their future. Of course he makes many mistakes during this fight, but he never gives up. Your film isn’t the easiest one to watch. It leaves the audience with many unanswered questions. Why? ER: Because this is a mission of art. VM: People who watch films, read books and are interested in art will find answers. Art has to ask a lot of questions, only then it can change the world.
17