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DARA OF JASENOVAC
Director: Peter Antonijevic Cast: Biljana Cekic, Zlatan Vidovic, Natasa Ninkovic, Igor Djordjevic, Marko Janketic MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:10 Release Date: 2/5/21 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 4, 2021 The nationalism and genocide of fascism weren't exclusive to Germany during World War II, and Dara of Jasenovac presents a fictionalized account, based on survivor testimonies, of the concentrations camps in the so-called Independent State of Croatia. The targets for forced labor and systematic murder were, like with the Nazi's genocide campaign, Jews and the Romani people, but specific to the Ustasha government of Croatia, ethnic Serbs were also included on the list of the "undesired." Director Peter Antonijevic's movie is one of nearly constant horror, terror, and death. It follows Dara (Biljana Cekic, who, like most of the cast here, is a non-professional actor), a 10-year-old girl who is sent to the Jasenovac concentration camp with her mother (played by Anja Stanic) and brothers—one slightly older and the other barely 2 years old. The girl's father Mile (Zlatan Vidovic), we soon learn, is a prisoner in a nearby camp, where he digs mass graves for the victims of this genocide. The girl and her younger brother are essentially left as orphans in the camp. She must figure out how they can survive—whether it's better to stay put and out of sight or to believe the rumors about an organization setting up children from the camps with families. Is it better to be together and in danger or separated and possibly safe? There are abundant scenes here that show the horrors of the camps, from the most senseless killings—watching the officers force a group of captives into a demented game of musical chairs, which makes a visiting German solider vomit—to the more sinister elements—seeing nuns fill the children's minds with propaganda about "cleansing" the country. Natasa Drakulic's screenplay doesn't try to obfuscate the nature of this government and its ancillaries: nationalistic, closely connected to the Catholic Church, and filled with people who either participate in mass slaughter or turn a blind eye to it. More questionable, though, is the way Antonijevic, using the metaphor of a train car gradually filling with recognizable victims, almost sentimentalizes the consequences of the horror. There are difficult questions here—what people must to do, whom they might betray, and what risks are worth taking in order to survive. In the movie's metaphorical afterlife and its move toward the melodrama of dual escapes, Dara of Jasenovac undercuts its hard, no-nonsense observations. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
strong and disturbing violent content, and some sexual content)
