Remarkable analysis of the Serb character leaves plenty of room to explore&nbsp;more universal themes.<BR>

Remarkable analysis of the Serb character leaves plenty of room to explore more universal themes.

Mane has flown back into Belgrade, his home town. It`s early in 1998, a long time before the NATO bombings on Serbia, but already the car radio in the taxi in which Mane rides into the city is reporting international pressure on Slobodan Milosovic to stop the fighting in Kosovo. The taxi driver is surprised Mane has returned. Anyone with any brains has left, he says. In the next couple of hours we discover why - Belgrade is the heart of darkness. The people are angry, quick-tempered, desperate, violent, impoverished... Serb director Goran Paskaljevic`s provocative film was originally titled The Powder Keg, after the play by Dejan Dukovski on which it`s based. The Short Cuts structure introduces the viewer to a considerable number of people - including refugees from the war in Bosnia - and Paskaljevic doesn`t mince matters in attempting to analyse the Serb character - romantic, quick tempered, soulful, fatalistic, violent, bitingly funny, self critical, quick to take offence. But as you watch this remarkable film you begin to wonder if these characters, these situations, all this rage, could be happening anywhere in the world today. This fine film, which is flawlessly acted by a great cast of veterans from the old Yugoslav cinema, is a credit to all concerned. Margaret`s comments: Even though this relentlessly vicious film is presented as a mock cabaret it`s reality and we know it and it`s frightening. Frightening because although its spiralling tale of murder and vindictiveness, anger repressed and expressed seems bound within the ethnic walls of Serbia it gives a terrifying insight into the unversality of the specific, reminding us of the possibility that all our lives are resting on a very thin veneer of civilization. The hatred of women, the self hatred of the men present a powerful and shocking film experience.