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'The Load' Review: Meeting History On the Road From Serbia to Kosovo By Glenn Kenny 3-4 minutes _____ Movies <https://www.nytimes.com/section/movies> |'The Load' Review: Meeting History On the Road From Serbia to Kosovo Critic's Pick Set in a Yugoslavia wracked by violence, the film puts across powerful questions of individual responsibility in the face of atrocity. Image "The Load" is the director Ognjen Glavonic's narrative feature-directing debut.CreditCreditGrasshopper Film <https://www.nytimes.com/by/glenn-kenny> * Aug. 29, 2019, 7:00 a.m. ET * "The Load" is set in Yugoslavia in 1999, amid the NATO bombings meant to put an end to roiling ethnic violence. At both the film's opening and close to its end, bombs are seen from afar - streams of what look like fireworks that ascend and descend but never burst into color. The characters in this atmospheric, gripping film don't respond to the sight in any way; the explosives are just one more unpleasant component of their unpleasant day-to-day living. It's one of the themes of the movie, the first fiction feature written and directed by Ognjen Glavonic <https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-ognjen-glavonic/> : how people adapt to ambient atrocity, muffling it to the point that they pay it hardly any notice. The story follows Vlada (Leon Lucev), a man in early middle age with a perpetually furrowed brow and down-turned mouth. He is on his third outing as a truck driver; it's not what he's trained for, but he needs the money. Vlada doesn't know what he's carrying in his truck, the rear of which is locked and chained up for good measure. All he knows is that he'd like to make it from Kosovo to Belgrade in time to sleep at home. When he sets out, he finds several burning automobiles blocking a bridge; he meets a teenage hitchhiker, Paja (Pavle Cemerikic), who claims to know an alternate route. The movie gradually reveals aspects of Vlada's past, and of his character, often through the smallest of details, such as with an old lighter Vlada lends Paja. Initially, all we know is that it doesn't work too well. But in dribs and drabs, the viewer eventually learns the story of the lighter, the inscription on it, who it came from - all of it coming together to explain Vlada's world-weariness. By the end of the movie, Vlada realizes he is abetting war crimes of a particularly odious nature. In the film's final quarter, after he finally reaches home, he grapples with what action he should, or even can, take in opposition. The cheap camera he uses to photograph the rear compartment of the truck seems a weak weapon. The gray skies under which Glavonic shoots, the unhurried takes in which he chronicles the drive, they put us with Vlada in an unmitigated way, the better to compel viewers to ask themselves what they would do in his position. The Load Not rated. In Serbian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Access more of The Times by creating a free account or logging in. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SERBIAN NEWS NETWORK" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/senet/004c01d55e6f%241fb40550%245f1c0ff0%24%40gmail.com.
