Man Is Not a Bird

As a matter of pure pleasure, a measurement held dear by this auteur, this might compete with the great "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" as my favorite of Machevejev's movies. It's probably not the writer- director's second greatest work, but, with it's movingly alive, yet unflattering depiction of a communist- Yugoslavia mining town, it particularly moved me. The film's critique of Yugoslavian communism: profoundly, but predictably disappointing, yet just barely worthy of affirmation, seemed to me a brilliant description of life itself.

Machevejev may well be the most affirmationally erotic artist in the cinematic canon. Human touch always affirms life, for the better or worse of the subsequently affirmed. Here, all involved turn out okay: they get to continue to enjoy the spectacle that is the socialist circus of life. (For me, Machevejev's affirmation of the existential circus seems much more sincere than that of, say, Fellini.)

The guy behind this is clearly a talented man, this is the first of his stuff I see but it's an acquaintance I'm happy to make. It's a Yugoslav Breathless of sorts, or better yet the Czech film Loves of a Blonde which came out the same year, except instead of scenic Paris this unfolds in dour Belgrade, it has actual blood running in its veins instead of just poise, and instead of a boyhood fantasy about movies and movie icons, it locks the story in all sorts of other self-referential illusion.

The hypnotist who explains to an audience about the power of superstition and illusory belief, a great viewing template that sets up everything else as objectively unreal yet present in the willing viewer. The pompous ceremony where a superintendent is awarded by the communist powers that be before an audience of bored factory workers, some of whom may have even turned up to watch the film. The closing scene with the circus of very real absurdities.

So this is the journey here, from cinematic hypnotizing to slightly less (or more) real situations through what palpable desires these may unlock.

It's all centered in a relationship between a blonde hairdresser and a middle-aged superintendent of an energy project. The desires being to trust a lover, to complete a work even as you wonder why, to have dreams survive. I like that it is primarily visual and freeform, while being vital instead of just an artifact of technique; the less you think you have to say, the less of your own self obscures the possibilities of what is before you.

It isn't great, but it is among the most accomplished debuts of New Wave. Now I set my eyes on later works by this guy.

Dusan Makavejev made himself known in the world of international cinema with his first film, Man in Not a Bird, and it's a film that juggles stories and a political atmosphere (mostly) in the guise of a documentary on a copper mill. It deals with romance and work, two themes that Makavejev would toy with and dissect with his anarchic and absurdist style throughout his whole career. It's about a construction foreman, Jan Rudinski (Janez Vrhovec), who is in town to oversee the copper mill, and a hairdresser named Rajka (Milena Dravić) who falls in love with him. How this happens is never made exactly clear, even as Makavejev indulges in a moodily-lit lovemaking scene that tells us all we need to know about their passion, nor is it clear how he is really attracted to her. That is, until their relationship becomes compromised by a man closer to her age, a guy who always comes in to the barbershop to get shaved even when he doesn't need it, just to hit on her.

It's this, plus an undercooked story of a drunken man and his troublesome own affair that brings out a huge girl-fight between his wife and his lover in the middle of a street, that marks the dramatic side of the picture. Mixing in and out of these stories is footage of the mill, the workers working diligently, leading up to a big celebratory concert where Beethoven's 9th fills the air (also in cutaways to Rajka having her fling with the man in the truck as her actual lover sits in his awarding ceremony).

It's not filled with Makavejev's rampant humor, and it's more of a real "film" instead of one of his hybrid comedy-documentaries. Man is Not a Bird is a fresh burst of original film-making, and if it's not always engaging during its 79 minutes (I found myself tuning out in a couple of scenes) it's still reveals an artist with something to say. There's something urgent about his film, particularly towards the end and during those hypnotist scenes where the audience is enraptures by the hypnotists skills directing people on a stage. Makavejev is after an essential truth in human nature: work and love can't always go together, or sometimes one takes over the other, and a (Communist) nation like the one this is set in needs to find a balance of both.

"The word itself comes from the Greek hypnos, meaning sleep. But hypnosis is not ordinary sleep but an induced, artificial sleep. For a man asleep can do nothing, but under hypnosis he can carry out the most complex commands, including murder."

In depicting the grimy reality for workers in a mining community instead of conditions which were usually idealized as cheerful and patriotic in propaganda films, Dusan Makavejev inserted himself into the Yugoslav Black Wave movement with his debut effort. It's rough around the edges but its cinematography is fantastic, and its thinly veiled criticism of State communism is deeply meaningful. Aside from the earthy, realistic, and certainly non-idealized workers in the toxic environment of the Bor Mining Basin (in what is now eastern Serbia), there are many pokes at the Yugoslav state:

• The class field trip of a group of children to see workers, where we hear their teacher comment on how they've seized control from the capitalists, but also that the gold mining could have netted every citizen in Yugoslavia a set of gold teeth, which is wealth the manual laborers are definitely not receiving. A couple of them feel a need to steal cable by winding it around their bodies instead.

• The pushing of the workers in order to complete the project ahead of schedule to enable a business deal with South America, which looked a lot like capitalism and made it apparent there wasn't much of a difference between working for the State and working for oligarchs running a "free market." Even the expert supervisor brought in from Slovenia is at risk for receiving only a token medal and a banquet for his efforts instead of getting the cash bonus he had been promised.

• The two large photographs of the workers' hands that are meant for the awards ceremony, but summarily removed, a symbol for how the workers are often praised but not really "seen" in this society, meant to be centered on the proletarian. In this same ceremony, we hear the soaring humanism of Beethoven's Ode to Joy set against the audience of workers who stare rather blankly at the performance, completely disconnected from the message of hope and joy.

• Perhaps most telling is the group hypnosis scene, which Makavejev references again at the end. In it the subjects go from being frightened by imaginary tigers, to floating like cosmonauts, to flying like birds, all to the delight of the audience. There is the obvious symbolism that the people in this town are not capable of soaring like birds, they are trapped in brutal conditions, and can't even escape cheap lives filled with sexual jealousy instead of the rapture of love. But there is also hidden commentary here in the collective hypnosis taking place under State communism, one that has people controllable by the State and deluded into thinking their reality is different than what is. Man is not a bird, indeed, and he needs to be awakened from this condition.

The only bright spot in what is a rather pessimistic film comes from the subplot of the wife (Eva Ras) of the terrible husband (Stojan Arandjelovic) who not only cheats on her, but gives his mistress almost all of her dresses. After getting into a brawl and being thrown in jail, he comes home glowering at her, telling her to shut up and serve him, then eats the dinner she's made with his hands straight out of the frying pan. What a guy, and we're also told he beats her. When she sees the other woman in the market, she chases her down and fights her on top of a pile of cabbages. But her epiphany comes when she tells her friend that her husband has been like a hypnotist and in control of her. In the concert scene we see her sitting with another man, an indication that she has "woken up" from her hypnosis and will be moving on to a better situation, escaping him.

Filling in the rest of the story is the love triangle between the visiting supervisor (Janez Vrhovec), a young woman who seduces him as a means of possibly escaping the town (Milena Dravic), and the local truck driver who's constantly hitting on her and fondling her butt when she gives him a shave (Boris Dvornik). The tender lovemaking scenes with the supervisor are quite a contrast to the tawdry sex she has in the truck, but it's notable that despite promises of taking her with him when he leaves, the supervisor is silent when she asks if he's married or if he owns a house. He expects to remain opaque but demands an accounting of her, displaying some of the same unpleasant characteristics as Arandjelovic's character. I thought that in a minor key, the film also had a nice little critique of another controlling force, the patriarchy.

I liked the other little bits of entertainment for the workers here, including the singer Fatima early on ("I'm my ma's Friday child / I'm no doll, but I'm wild"), and the hypnotist explaining local superstitions like when a clock's hands come together, girls imagining a boy is thinking of them and trying to guess his name. Makavejev rounds it off with a traveling circus show ala Fellini, featuring lurid acts like a contortionist, people who put snakes in their mouths, and a scantily clad woman shaking what she's got - things the workers respond to much more than Beethoven. It seemed like a perfect ending to a brilliant debut film, one that deserves more appreciation.

Dušan Makavejev's directorial debut looks at the lives of some people in a mining town. I interpreted "Čovek nije tica" ("Man Is Not a Bird" in English) as a satire on Yugoslavian society. Yugoslavia was initially part of the Eastern Bloc, but Tito's disagreements with Stalin led to its expulsion from the alliance. Nevertheless, Eastern Bloc-style policies remained in place. The wealth stayed concentrated among the party, while most people worked dangerous jobs. It may have been easier for people in the US and Western Europe to go to Yugoslavia than to the rest of Eastern Europe, but to its citizens it was little different from the Soviet bloc. And the hypnosis scenes? It might evoke abstract hypnosis, or convincing people of something that isn't true: both the Eastern and Western blocs tried to pass themselves off as defenders of freedom, even as both did unethical things. To be certain, the open-pit mine looks like the sort of thing that one would find in West Virginia.

I found it to be a good movie. I now hope to see Makavejev's other movies.