Seize the Day

The film poster of the Yugoslavian film THE FRAGRANCE OF WILD FLOWERS (1977).

Have you ever felt like you were not leading the life you imagined for yourself or worse – you had achieved success in your field but felt as if everything had become a boring, mechanical routine and you were trapped? This is the existential dilemma that is facing Ivan Vasiljevic (Ljuba Tadic), a famous theater actor, who is currently preparing for a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The day before the play’s premiere, Ivan walks out during the rehearsal, refusing to return, and decides to abandon everything, including his wife. He joins his friend Jeca Smrda (Nemanja Zivic) aboard a rundown barge and settles into a life of leisure with no responsibilities as they drift along the shore of the Danube. While Ivan’s nonconformist rebellion seems to mirror the behavior of free-spirited characters in American films like Murray (Jason Robards Jr.) in A Thousand Clowns (1965) or the poet Samson (Sean Connery) in A Fine Madness (1966), his journey, as depicted in Miris Poljskog Cveca (English title: The Fragrance of Wild Flowers, 1977), becomes a wry satire and meditation on one man’s life in Yugoslavia under a Socialist regime. But the film is not a political critique and opts instead for an offbeat character study.

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Saboteur, Pawn or Hero?

Orzechowski (Kaimierz Opalinski), a retired railroad employee, tries to prevent an impending disaster in the 1957 Polish drama Czlowiek na Torze (English title: MAN ON THE TRACKS), directed by Andrzej Munk.

A train rushes through the night somewhere in Poland and the engineer receives an all-clear signal from the local lineman as it moves full speed ahead through a rural crossing. Suddenly a man appears in the train headlights and seems to be warning the engineer of some impending danger but is struck down before the train can be stopped. The victim is Wladyslaw Orzechowski, a former railroad employee who was recently goaded into retirement. Czlowiek na Torze (English title: Man on the Tracks, 1957) is, in some ways, a mystery except that we know the identity of the victim and how he died. The big question is why and Polish director Andrzej Munk presents the facts of the case in the form of a crime procedural crossed with a flashback structure seemingly influenced by the 1950 Japanese film Rashomon. Four people, including three witnesses, give their versions of the event, and each one adds another level of insight and complexity to the tragedy.

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