King Petar the First

I stopped watch ing after 40 minute. Story doesn't make a sense, to many gaps... Special effect are preety good, so you can make a feeling how bloody and meaningles was Great war.

This movie has everything that one good historical movie should have: An important topic for the history of the Great War, great acting, beautiful camera work, enchanting battles and most important, it shows the suffering of the Serbian people during retreat througt Albanian mountins in 1915.

Though very good, the film suffers from an excessive amount of events it shows, since the film originated from a 11-episode TV show material that will probably fill these tiny holes in chronology.

All in all, the film is must see if you like movies about war (WW1 and WW2) , and it is certainly one of the best Serbian films in this century.

The first virtue - it is a historical Eastern film. You feel that scene by scene. Second - it is a great testimony about one of terrible episodes of Serbian history. Not the last - it propose a magnificent performance of Lazar Ristovski. Sure, it seems too complex, mixing themes and characters more useful for a serie. But , obvious, using its tools, it is more impressive than Hollywood blockbusters with historical scenes. Because it is not exactly a film about heroism but about people. Their pain, kindness, love, fight, hope, friendship, survive, death, ways, faith, king.And the cinematography is more than inspired. Short, just a great film.

My great grandfather has actually been through this (he did not make it), so I had a very emotional and personal attachment to this movie, as did so many Serbs, I am sure. It's based on a true event. I am not going to mark this as containing spoilers because it is based on what actually happened in history. So, these events are known, but I did not disclose the details of the movie itself.

In 1914, Serbia had expelled Austria-Hungary 3 times.

When Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria did a combined attack against Serbia, the option to surrender was out of the question. The only way to temporarily retreat was south, over the rough, bitter cold Albanian mountains, where Serbia would connect to the Allies.

Eventually, the Serbian Army - what was left of it - made it to the Greek island of Corfu, where it recovered in a matter of months, then making the swift return home to liberate Serbia.

This episode in Serbian history is known as the Albanian Golgotha, and is the main focus of the movie. I loved the coronation scene in the beginning. King Peter I of Serbia was a truly democratic ruler. He also translated John Stuart Mill's work "On Freedom" and is in Serbia known as King the Liberator. He is Serbia's most respected King and the only one in modern Serbian history to have been crowned.

This movie was the Serbian candidate for the Oscars, did not make it. If this were an episode in American history, and if it were an American movie, it would have won an Oscar.

The movie will be subtitled in several languages, so please see it if you can.

Sometimes when films are made, one deliberately films some extra footage so that there is enough material for a TV series as well. Unfortunately, in this case they had a script for a 12 episode long TV series, which they proceeded to butcher in order to make a film out of it. That did not work out. From beginning to end, one feels that scenes don't fit well together, because numerous scenes have been cut out of the original script. The film comes across as an afterthought, an exercise in reducing ten hours of material to one fifth of that length.

The TV series is much better, and I would advise everyone to skip the film and watch the series.