A review of Tilva Roš (or my complicated love letter to shitty hometowns)
The first time I ever felt compelled to write about where I come from was when I left. I think of my hometown and I think hopeless - though from this distance that word takes on a gentle, almost endearing tone. Seen from a vignette of pleasant holiday memories served to me no more than three times a year, the attribute of hopelessness in reference to homes, towns and hometowns becomes less of an all-encompassing nothingness, and more of a quirk you can call upon when trying to describe where you are from to people who have never and will never experience such a thing.
There is this film that I think of whenever I start to miss home. It's called Tilva Roš. Most simply described, it is a film about a group of skating, adrenaline-seeking boys (and a mostly-plot-device girl) - one of them taking the forefront of the narrative - about coming of age, and about that limbo summer after high school ends. It's essentially a plotless film - deliberately positioning itself between acts, in order to tell a story in the middle of two stories (that of high school and that of what comes next). The ensemble of teenagers (1) pull some stunts, get drunk, get a crush, swear, punch, get jealous, get angry, laugh some, cry some, maybe forgive or maybe resign - and along with the summer, the film ends.
However, in its essence, Tilva Roš is also a film about a hometown: about my hometown, which feels funny to say for several reasons. Firstly, because the film is not actually about my hometown - it's about a different place in Serbia no one outside of Serbia has heard of - which, though once prosperous, has now become a sort of black hole slowly caving into itself under less-than-ideal sociopolitical circumstances (2). Secondly, because it depicts a very… young-boy-alternative culture that, while it definitely dominated the spaces I inhabited, I could only ever feel like a fringe part of (always a friend of a friend, a fleeting source of interest, or a girlfriend). Thirdly, because many of the complaints about the film reference how Americanized it feels - the most obvious offenders being its references to Jackass and the fact that the film is underlined by a soft, indie, English-language soundtrack. Finally, it's funny because Tilva Roš takes place in 2010 - and in 2010, my only points of contact with being a teenager were through Winx and my imagination.
I think of my hometown and I think - a movie about teenage Jackasses from fourteen years ago taking place 300km from where I grew up. And none of those things make it any less accurate. It is still a film about myself, my friends, the people I admired from afar as a young teenager and the people I don’t speak with anymore. About families and about friendships. About the spaces we inhabited and about how we inhabited them (clumsily, loudly, unapologetically). It is also, at its core, a film about class and politics - how they sink their teeth into the paths we are "destined" to take, but also about how they inevitably seep into the music we listen to, into the people we emulate, into the words we use and into what we (aim to) own. About how relationships are inevitably influenced by such factors even when we have not developed the vocabulary to name them yet.
The first time I saw Tilva Roš, I was in my third year of high school, at a skate and art festival called Summit of the Non-Aligned. It was the first (and last) time that such an event would take place in my hometown, and like any interesting event organized by people outside our immediate area (which there have been maybe …three instances of in my lifetime), my friends and I anticipated it with a sort of secret excitement. I'm not sure how much the organizers enjoyed the experience - I can vividly remember their attempts to get us to party after the screening (they were semi-successful at best) - but for the entire day, there was something in the atmosphere that still makes my insides stir. Within that awkward entanglement of familiar and unfamiliar faces, a palpable feeling that something is alive or that it may come to life very soon.
I am no longer home and even when I return, I am never there in that capacity. Many wonderful people are still there and that is where some will remain. And whatever I remember that had (almost, maybe) come to life that day was extinguished by the end of next week anyway, swallowed up somewhere in the pit of aimlessness. The between acts has long since passed, yet I have returned to it many times: the day, the film, the memories of the people I was surrounded by (in all of their stunt-pulling, drinking, crushing, swearing, jealous, angry, laughing, crying humanity). I think of my hometown and I say hopeless and it is true and it is not. In the distance I've since put between us, the attribute of hopelessness is less of an all-encompassing nothingness and more of a stirring of the insides, thinking of the idea that something could once be alive in that place. The anticipation and the pursuit of a fleeting something - a film, a stunt, a drink with friends - with a sort of secret excitement, though you know very well it will be extinguished in a flicker.
It would feel wrong to call them characters - none of the younger cast are professional actors and most of them are playing themselves in some capacity
It is worth pointing out here that Serbia is not a monolith, and that the black hole I talk about here also takes on a different shape in the East (where the film takes place) and in the North (where I grew up) in certain aspects (that I am definitely not well-educated enough to describe, but which have to do with, for example, the dominant industries in each area, the amount of government funding, etc.).
