A Serbian Film (2011)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There are some films that should never have been made. This is one of them. It is revolting, twisted and sickening. The film was banned in a number of countries around the globe - with good reason! This is an 'art film' in its worst form. The ending was completely dissatisfying. I don't recommend this at all.

For naming 'Serbian movie" this disgusting piece of shame. Other Serbian movies are my favorite, this one does not deserve to exist.

This movie is really disturbing, cruel, and depressing, but it gets beyond the levels of triggering the viewer's stimulation, it is just absolutely disgusting and offending. I can't understand the reason why would anyone direct, produce and star in a movie like this one. There are so many sick scenes, really shocking and painful to watch, just mentioning some of them: sexually violating a newborn baby after delivering it, having sex with a woman and chopping her head off and still having sex with her after she's dead, the actor raping his own son... Simply sick, offending, and shocking. I cant't find absolutely nothing to justify a movie like this. I can't recommend it for anyone to watch.

Undoubtedly one of the most controversial films in cinema recently, A Serbian Film has garnered a very polarised reaction over the years. Me personally, I feel that it is nothing particularly great or particularly bad, just OK. Let's explore why, shall we?Now one of my immediate positives concerning this film is its plot and pacing. Unlike most movies these days, it is happy to take its time to set up characters and story in order to provide context and develop the leads to the point where we care enough about their situations to get the audience involved. I like good old fashioned slow burners, and it's nice to see one like this, especially one done quite well. Now, there are some structural issues however. This mainly concerns the last third, whereby it becomes weirdly non-linear all of a sudden, of which doesn't serve the story or the film in any meaningful way. It feels done to make the film more stylish, but instead comes across as a major amateur writing mistake, as is expected of a debut.There are also other positives as well. The acting is very good from all of the cast, it develops a mood and atmosphere quite nicely, and it is quite well made for the low budget film that it is. Meanwhile, its themes on filmmaking, sexuality and exploitation can be quite interesting, even if it is a little on the nose. Mainly I just like how it is pretty much the anti-torture porn movie. Whereas most films in this genre sensationalise hardcore violence and sex for the sake of cheap thrills, A Serbian Film goes even further than movies like Saw and Hostel dared, all the while taking the fun out of it via the score which combines parts of a synth piece which sounds like its from a porn film with bleak and bombastic orchestral pieces, the general disgust most characters feel when encountering such violence as well as the general negative tone and vibes associated with such content. All of this combines to represent how generally disgusting, vile and depraved such violence is in the first place. It does become an interesting look at voyeurism, and even if other films have done it better before, the contributions of this film are fine.That leads me to the film's biggest strength and ultimate flaw: the controversial content. The film's outlandish and degenerate content has pretty much clashed badly with everyone: film critics, general audiences and film censors who have been perfectly happy to hack it to pieces all over the world. Now make no mistake, the film is extremely messed up in many ways, and is definitely not everyone's cup of tea in that regard. However, I do find it interesting how these same people are bothered by the violence and depravity in this film, but have no problem with the general sadism and lowest common denominator style guff in various Western and Hollywood movies, whether that be the endless sadism of say Tarantino's garbage, Natural Born Killers, Sin City, the list goes on. The difference is that this film is at least trying to make you think and doesn't glorify the violence whereas those movies are seeking to wallow in sadism for the sake of entertainment. I know which one is more concerning here.As such, I do like how the film is able to address many controversial topics including Serbian politics (with the newborn porn scene being a weird way of conveying how many feel that Serbia is a failed state for instance), the torture porn genre in general (in how bizarre it is that people enjoy such violence) and voyeurism in general. As stated previously, I also like how it is the anti-torture porn movie; by taking the genre to further extremes all the while demonstrating how awful such violence actually is. Given these circumstances, it's not a surprise that very few torture porn films would be released in this film's wake, given how high a bar this film set in terms of cinematic violence all the while undermining the pleasures of such violence to make further films in this genre seem rather redundant and nasty by comparison.However, its also the film's biggest problem. Why? Its way too obvious in what it is trying to say. The Vukmir character is clearly a grossly exaggerated caricature and commentary of pretentious European art-house directors, the violence in of itself is a not so subtle attack on torture porn and the final tirades of life imitating art and depravity being true cinema by Vukmir at the end come across as slap in the face obvious, and not subtly done at all. And while it does make the film mean it has something to say, it displays it all to the point where it becomes insultingly easy to figure out, potentially leaving further analysis off the table altogether, something probably the filmmakers would want to be done with their film. Also, some of the violence does come across as a little bit lowest common denominator, and ironically pandering to the audience the film is so keen to criticise. And some of the more cruder scenes are so immaturely done that it wouldn't shock me if Jay from The Inbetweeners wrote those parts of the script.A Serbian Film is nowhere near as bad as most of the biased press and film censors would say (of whom clearly have agendas of their own), nor is it as good as some of its ardent defenders would have you believe. It is an OK film, worthwhile of discussion due to its ideas and unique take on certain genres, especially torture porn. However, it is very flawed and there are far better horror films with social commentaries out there. So its worth a watch (provided you have the stomach for it), even if it is rough around the edges. A Serbian Film is an overall entertaining film that is worth watching.