04/05/2023 - Promising Serbian director Siniša Cvetić places traditional customs and dangerous modern-day habits on the same table in his theatre-like tragicomical feature debut

Serbian low-budget cinema accelerated significantly in the last decade, with My Morning Laughter [+see also:
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trailer
film profile] and Celts [+see also:
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interview: Milica Tomovic
film profile] being among its finest examples. The Beheading of St John the Baptist [+see also:
trailer
film profile] combines the humorous coming-of-age flavour of the former with the unity of time, space, and action in one apartment of the latter. Although it is neither as intuitively cinematic nor as hilariously witty as the above examples, its dissection of a family within its domestic environment provides food for thought on the condition of society at large, through individual psychological portraits.

By keeping his productions low-key, 29-year-old director Siniša Cvetić has accumulated an impressive filmography of four shorts and one mid-length TV film since only 2018. All of them were made with modest budgets and facilities but had strong ideas behind them, supported by juicy dialogue and generous acting. The Beheading of St John the Baptist, his latest film, has just been presented in competition at goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film. 

“The greatest achievement of our civilisation is drugs,” claims a 22-year-old man (Pavle Mensur) in the film’s opening scene while sniffing speed in his darkened room, whining about his impotence and contemplating his distorted facial image on a monitor. Later on, he’ll apathetically go to church with his father (Bojan Žirović), who will then — also apathetically — prepare a dinner for his friends as he does every year on September 11, the one-day fast on the occasion of St. John the Baptist’s beheading, which is celebrated almost exclusively in Serbia. This pseudo-religious and ritualistic framework is there only to keep upright the otherwise fragile construction of an existence that is falling apart. While the drug-addicted and unemployed son initially seems to be the black sheep of the household, issues begin to lurk before and during the dinner, not only within the family but also in their friends’ circle. Current and former addictions to alcohol, drugs, and beauty procedures for aesthetic improvements reveal dissatisfaction and a profound emptiness of the soul. The reasons are unnamed but could be anything in the post-Yugoslavian context — war traumas, loss of values, faith replaced with consumerism and instant pleasures. No one is clean and nothing is sacred at this pointless feast in times of fasting. Cynical humour, bitter laughs, and impenetrable depression go hand in hand. Meanwhile, the terminally ill and speechless grandfather, the still living head of the family, remains abandoned in his room amidst deathly loneliness. “We discovered drugs to save us,” echoes another statement by the troubled son, one that suddenly sounds very apropos. 

Monotonous at certain moments and insightful at others, David Jakovljević’s screenplay manages to hold the viewer’s attention through the gradual exposure of the characters’ psychology via dialogue, while Cvetić’s directing invokes nuanced acting performances — from defensive arrogance, through helpless airs, to poorly disguised vulnerability. Although this might not sound exciting enough, a sudden twist towards the very end puzzles and mobilises even the most passive viewer. Marko Milovanović’s camera is mostly static and explorative in the interior sequences, thereby implying charged internal dynamics, while exterior sequences of unfiltered wanderings around the shabby neighbourhood add to the overall atmosphere of private and social decay. 

The Beheading of St John the Baptist was produced by Serbia’s Kosutnjak Film.