A Serbian Film – 2010 – The most controversial film ever!

In A Serbian Film, Milos is a former porn actor, the best in the business! He’s even a living legend and if no one else can deliver a hard-on, he sure can! He can keep it up forever, or so it seems, but he’s retired now. He has a wife and a son and wants to spend his time with them these days.

But he still gets offers from the porn business and one day he gets an offer he can’t refuse. The amount of money he’s offered makes it possible for him and his family to spend the rest of his life in luxury. He’s not given a script and the director claims that the real facial expressions can’t be achieved if he knows too much about the movie in advance. Soon he realizes that he shouldn’t have signed up for the project and wants out. Something that’s easier said than done!

Expectations

I heard very much about this movie before I saw it and my expectations were very high before I viewed it. The rumor about it was that it was the most extreme movie made – ever! And a movie that disturbs its viewer with strong emotions is a very good movie in my world. On the other hand isn’t it uncommon that great expectations often lead to even greater disappointments? That’s according to my personal experience of course. There are usually two opinions about the movie among movie buffs. Either you love it or hate it. Some people claim it’s just an excuse for exploiting child pornography (there are no such scenes in the movie), which it may or may not suggest at times.

Those who say they love A Serbian Film claim that there is an underlying story about Serbian society. What happens on screen is, in fact, a metaphor for what’s going on in society. The hopelessness of it all. In that sense, you could argue that it becomes an existential movie that questions the reason why we are all here. The movie revolves around pornography and that wasn’t too hard to figure out, but that doesn’t make it a porn movie in any way. There is no visual penetration and the nude scenes are fewer than expected. I don’t see anything strange in a movie that covers the porn world but not becoming a porn movie itself.

Not Just Graphic

In fact, I think that that’s making the movie better. There’s not just graphical explicit sex just because of the hell of it, a lot of the sexual situations are of the kind that you have to create in your own mind. I think that’s preferable in 99% of all cases. The imagination of the viewer is usually much more vivid than what filmmakers in general are able to visualize anyway!

But it is a strong and revolting movie. Do I get anxious when I watch it? Is it as good as the rumor? Well… No, it isn’t! It’s a pretty slow-paced movie where the main concerns are Milos’s fall and decadence. The movie is more about him and his anxiety about what he has to do to the other participants in the porn movie. There are only victims in the movie – no winners, and I think that’s a good way to tell the story. It might be a message to the porn industry but I would have wanted even more helplessness from the participants. They’re all victims, yes, but they show us strong scenes of hopeless decadence and humiliation!

There is a point!

But even if the movie starts out being a slow tempo is that certainly not the case when it’s about to end. You get sucked in the movie and there seems to be a point to make the next scene slightly stronger than the one before. You wonder what the final act of humiliation will be and when it comes to ultra perverted sex there’s really no equal to it. The final minutes are some of the most revolting minutes I’ve ever seen and it’s made in a way that keeps the perversions going even after it ends. It glues itself in your mind in a way that shallow but violent movies can’t! You know those kinds of movies that only seek to shock us with their violence. A Serbian Film is not such a movie in my mind. There’s a point and a meaning to it!