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A Croatian noir that even the Danes would not be ashamed of

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Knowing what banalities our screenwriters are amused by, it is confusing that for years they have been disregarding incredibly exciting stories - local crime tales, mafia sagas, melodramatic plots, and political thrillers that remain cinematically intact. "Rest in Peace" is the first domestic drama product that shows common sense and interest in the themes and stories that surround us, and most of those I have had the opportunity to see have the potential for a feature film.

"This is a robbery! Hands up! Give me those biscuits or I'll glue you to death!" shouts the disguised Sandra Lončarić Tankosić, pointing a 'gun' to stick prices in the store at Ksenija Marinković's back. "You have to drill holes for your eyes or take a thinner stocking," Marinković answers coolly. Thus, two saleswomen in a neighborhood store who found themselves in debt were inspired to rob a post office with stockings on their heads and children's guns in their hands. This is the summary of the fourth episode of the series "Rest in Peace", otherwise a true story from Zagreb that newspaper readers had fun with a few years ago. The two of them really robbed a bank (not the post office as in the series) and then fled with bags full of money - by tram.

We took the episode with the robbers as an example of a good screenwriting flair, but we could also retell another one, such as the one about a Serb from Zagreb who died in prison in the early '90s, during the Zec family executions, in an atmosphere of general alarm, paranoia from snipers and anyone not bearing the Croatian surname. Knowing what banalities our screenwriters are amused by, it is confusing that for years they have been disregarding incredibly exciting stories - local crime tales, mafia sagas, melodramatic plots, and political thrillers that remain cinematically intact. "Rest in Peace" is the first domestic drama product that shows common sense and interest in the themes and stories that surround us, and most of those I have had the opportunity to see have the potential for a feature film. Watching the series, I wondered if it was really possible that no filmmaker was intrigued by the atmosphere of the cities on alert at the beginning of the war or that no one noticed that bittersweet story about bank robbers. Couldn’t they be some kind of our transitional Thelma and Louise, no longer cashiers who want to go to sea, but just squander the rent money?

In addition to the thematic breakthrough, "Rest in Peace" brings other novelties. Namely, this is our first series created in collusion with trends across the border, primarily with the so-called Scandinavian Noir. Unfortunately, so far we have had the opportunity to see only the Danish series "Forbrydelsenr" (this was the case at the time of writing, later shown "Borgen" and "Bron" were shown), but its impact is very noticeable. For example, in positioning the main character, the stature of a fragile but strong and self-confident girl played by Judita Franković (I am convinced that her refreshing performance and acting from another register has to do with the fact that she did not attend the Academy of Dramatic Arts), very similar to the stubborn and intelligent policewoman Lund. Also, the way in which the parallel actions are intertwined, the treatment of a larger number of episodic characters, as well as the tonality that counts on adult and mature audiences, undoubtedly reveal good role models. Some directing or filming procedures do not hide that they were borrowed from "Forbrydelsen", for example, the use of music and an accentuated montage sequence, and in creating the atmosphere is a special contribution of director of photography Mario Sablić who, instead of the usual three shades of gray for domestic television products, gave the series 50 shades of brown.

Directors Goran Rukavina and Kristijan Milić should be acknowledged for their clear and dynamic plotting, the choice of locations is also excellent, but if something is a real sensation, then it is the acting achievements. And I do not mean the already mentioned Judita Franković, nor Miodrag Krivokapić, an actor superstar from whom, after all, we do not expect anything other than a top performance, but acting as a whole. Namely, for ten years now, drama production has been dominated by soap operas, so today we see actors and actresses who grew up in them and almost can't act differently than they learned there, which means that a good actor is the one who manages to pronounce all written sentences in less than three takes. This soap opera tone has completely taken over television, and it is increasingly penetrating the film, so the fact that "Rest in Peace" looks and sounds like a good film and not like a bad telenovela is a real success. You probably know that feeling when you're ashamed of yourself on the couch for someone's awful acting on the screen, and that's really not the case in this series.

Recently, Belgrade's Danas chose "Where the Wild Boars Go" produced by the then Television Zagreb as the best ex-Yu series of all time, but what would happen if the same question referred to the period from 1990? In our country, the only more ambitious series in the 90s was awful "Stormy Silences", a decade later the outrageously expensive and pathetic Vrdoljak's "Long Dark Night", Hrvoje Hribar with "New Age" didn't exactly "nailed it", so only soap operas and sitcoms with humor only slightly upgraded in relation to "Someone Asked About Me?" came to life.

Thus, "Rest in Peace" without real competition took the title of the best Croatian drama series since 1990.

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'Rest in peace' - the peak of domestic feature TV production

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There is no doubt that some moments, and probably entire episodes of this series, will be difficult for some viewers, but one of the basic tasks of good drama series is to shake and wake up the audience.

For a long time now, no domestic drama series has appeared on Croatian television that would fit into the world trend of flourishing television fiction. Local TV commissioners obviously don't even think that viewers expect more from the series, so they mistakenly believe in the inexhaustibility of interest in nonsense and frantically release soap operas, occasionally allowing themselves, in attacks of insane adventure, to dive into more or less successful comedies. The dramas have stalled somewhere at the level of the seventies, they are mostly bad to mediocre, so the axiom about TV big shots that are afraid of their own shadow has already taken root; that is why they do not try to find out whether the audience is ready for the so-called more demanding content, wondering in a cold sweat if such decision would turn off the audience or, God forbid, anger someone sensitive with cash in their pocket. For a long time, it seemed that no one offered them anything of quality because of that.

The new drama series 'Rest in Peace', which airs on January 4 on HTV's First Channel, breaks down these obstacles and assumptions on several levels - at least judging by the first three episodes. In them, a young journalist Lucija Car (Judita Franković) reveals the secrets of those buried in the cemetery of the old prison scheduled for demolition, with the help of retired prison guard Martin Strugar (Miodrag Krivokapić). In each episode, the story of one grave unfolds, although, behind the backs of a dynamic duo, an evil spirit released from a bottle in the first episode recedes throughout the series.

Already in the first three episodes, catching up with world trends is very noticeable. I’m not saying that a revolution erupts from every frame or that HBO will stumble on creators' doorstep tomorrow crying with envy, but in the context of domestic production, the series is not only a shift but also an Air-Jordan kind of leap towards better. First and foremost, it looks worldly (silly and inaccurate adjective, I know, but you know what I mean), and not just because of the shooting technique and beautiful filters that achieve the gloomy-brownish atmosphere of digging through a troubled past. There are also wonderful details such as when Lucija meets Martin in the courtyard of his old Zagreb building (Ratkajev prolaz) and the yard looks like a prison, which suggests that the old cat never stopped being a guard. The girls and guys who put it together, therefore, know how to express themselves visually and we finally got a series that can’t be watched as a radio drama, with your back facing the TV. A dose of claustrophobia is also brilliantly evoked, inevitable for a story so much about prison: everything takes place in somewhat cramped spaces, car interiors, cells, shelters, and backrooms of shabby nightclubs, in front of many scenes the door is half or completely closed, and the whole suffocating atmosphere is thickened by a soundtrack with a finely hit ratio of melancholy and sinisterness.

But if that was the only thing that counts in the series, everyone would normally give up watching at half of the first episode (we can also see beautiful visual elements in documentaries about animals on National Geographic), but fortunately - it's not like that. Besides looking nice, the stories and characters from the first three episodes are also quite interesting, there is zero chance they'll bother you with anything, but they also won't allow you to cook beans along the way. There is everything here: from prison psychopaths who show their dominance over the environment in the first sentence to the revealing of the character of prison guards (which is perhaps the strongest for me), whose morals and emotions cannot remain intact in the environment of a repressive and unhappy institution. The actors are excellent - I didn't expect anything less from the legendary Krivokapić, Judita Franković is convincing and nice, Janko Popović Volarić achieved something truly exceptional in the third episode with astonishingly few words, and I will write about Nada Gačešić Livaković later. They did, however, have grateful material. Namely, the characters they play are very layered and enriched with a bunch of inherent details, and along the way, they are given sentences that the viewer can imagine being uttered by a normal human being, which is almost a precedent in domestic production.

Much has already been said and written about the third episode of the series, mostly because of the painful presentation of the relationship between Croats and Serbs in the early 1990s. This Serbo-Croatian blues, from which no one in this country has been able to heal since the church schism, was miraculously not described in this series through a strict war perspective. Yes, air-raid sirens are heard, Vukovar and someone's son who returned from the battlefield without legs are mentioned, but there is no uniform other than that of the prison guards, no shooting or trench mud, not even flags. The whole story is told much more uneasily: through the prism of prison bullies, but also through the atmosphere of fear and intolerance in neighborhoods, through scenes of neighbors refusing to hold the door as you enter the building, and through shots of graffitis sprayed on the front door of someone's private apartment. There is nothing new in this - we all know that such things have happened, we have all, regardless of ethnicity, heard humiliating sentences about 'our boys and your boys' in shelters, but this is something completely new, and completely different fitted in the story than ever before. This fit into the story is summarized by a brilliant sentence by Martin Strugar. 'War is on the other side of the fence', he told a group of prison thugs. 'But here, inside - brotherhood and unity! You are all the same to me! You are all brothers in crime.' The sentence was uttered in 1992, from the inner building of the prison fence and far from the real, outer reality, but it resonates throughout the episode and is applicable far more widely. It will surely sit hard on someone's stomach. And it should.

The third episode is, therefore, undoubtedly important, but as a personal favorite I would still single out the second. The much less (actually not at all) politically charged story of a girl who died in prison at the age of nineteen is deeply shocking, even emotionally devastating, not only because of the really dark story of the deceased but also because of the character of prison guardian Josipa. I have never been a special fan of Nada Gačešić Livaković and until a few days I would rudely claim that her last good role was in 'Kapelski kresovi'. Here, however, she knocked me off my feet and her buzzword 'You little trash' in one of the last scenes almost literally broke my heart (I totally broke, yes). The second episode is also the most skilfully performed: the time jumps by which the series is recognizable are somehow the most subtle, and the hints of past events (for example, mother's suicide) are perfectly shortened to just as much information as the viewer needs to reconstruct the events himself, without superfluous explanations (a stylistic procedure that domestic TV authors have so far feared like hell).

Of course, this one, like any other series, is not without flaws. Hair from an egg could be pulled out because some (mostly younger) actors sometimes (less often than elsewhere) sound like they are reading a text from a teleprompter, Lucija lives with her retired mother and sick brother in a slightly too cozy apartment, scenes from Lucija's office are clichéd and copy-pasted from American series (along with exclamations: 'You’re suspended!'), and because from the first three episodes, it’s not even clear why Lucija’s boyfriend even exists as a notable figure in the series. We could object a bit to the obvious product placement of some little things, as well as the fact that the author's affection for the Danish 'Forbrydelsen', some tricks from 'Forgotten Case' and Helen Mirren from her inspector Jane Tennison's phase is very clear, but they are all minor things, so far quite insignificant for the general assessment.

And the general evaluation is - don’t miss this series. We’ve never seen anything like that from domestic production. And it was really about time.

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A series that will provoke controversy

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The series will surely provoke fierce controversy because the opening of graves is actually a metaphor for digging through the cancerous wounds of Croatian society.

After several months of struggle, HTV finally included the series "Rest in Peace" in the program. The slot is not bad, Friday at 9.45 pm on the First Program, where the first season of "Boardwalk Empire" has been shown so far, but the question remains why we had to wait so long for a drama product that is among the most interesting that HTV has broadcast so far. We may never find out if the project was too provocative for someone or the reason is banaler (the series was ordered by HTV's team which was then fired, and a new one was looking for a hair in the egg to prove that the predecessors didn't do their job well). Procrastination is more absurd if we know that our drama program has been dying out for years, and when a series of this caliber appears, HTV members, no matter what lobby or clan they belong to, should embrace it as a first-class sensation. The series "Rest in Peace" was produced by the production company Ring Multimedia on behalf of HTV, but its previous programs (its most successful soap opera "Valley of the Sun") did not really prepare us for such a surprise. The first synopsis was written by Koraljka Meštrović and Goran Rukavina, the head of the team that wrote the scripts for each of the 12 episodes was Saša Podgorelec, and the well-known young playwright Ivor Martinić and Ivan Turković Krnjak also collaborated with him. Rukavina and Kristijan Milić were chosen as directors (he won the Golden Arena in Pula for the war drama "The Living and the Dead") and the director of photography Mario Sablić often collaborated with Ring Multimedia (he also recorded last year's hit "Koko and the Ghosts").

Almost the entire Croatian acting cream was cast in 170 speech roles, but the best opportunities were given to Judita Franković from "Sonja and the Bull" and Miodrag Krivokapić, once a big star of Croatian theater, who moved to Belgrade in the early 1990s. Our leading animator Simon Bogojević Narath made an impressive opening credit. The main virtue of the series is that it rests on the original premise: it is not an adaptation of any foreign genre model, but an ingenious format perfect for licensing in other transition countries that have gone through similar historical upheavals as Croatia. The plot begins today, when the editor Zdeslav (Boris Svrtan) orders young television journalist Lucija Car (Franković) to make a seemingly routine report on the closure of the Vukovšćak penitentiary: our country's accession to the European Union is approaching, and the prison does not meet modern European standards (Vukovšćak, of course, does not exist, but a similar fate will threaten our actual prisons).

Lucija's attention is drawn to the improvised cemetery in the yard of Vukovščak, so she is intrigued by who is buried in it. She learns that these are prisoners whose bodies no one wanted to take over or who had no family. When a rag doll falls out of a coffin, and it turns out that a certain Zdenko Jurković (Dragan Despot) faked his own death in this way, Lucija seems to have discovered a great sensation. Her editor doesn't think so either, but the resourceful girl is ready to embark on this venture even without his approval. However, she needs something more important, and that is an "insider" who knew the prison and its "tenants" well. She fraudulently manages to obtain prison files, but the names mentioned in it mean nothing to her. However, retired prison guard Martin Strugar (Krivokapić), who is not willing to cooperate with her at first, but later changes his mind knows those names well. The story takes place on two levels: in the first, Lucija competes with Martin, who wants to keep a lot of things quiet, supported by her college colleague Željko Ban (Luka Dragić), now a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, but her boyfriend, promising politician Boris Drobnjak (Ozren Grabarić), is not thrilled with her investigation. At the same time, the girl is constantly receiving threatening text messages and other unpleasant warnings, which she assumes come from Jurković: he used to work for the Yugoslav secret agency UDBA, and now has a powerful protector in the Croatian political leadership.

In each episode, the fate of one of the prisoners buried in the cemetery is revealed. Some got there during socialism, such as the young communist Marko Glavina (Ivan Glowatzky), who hoped to be received by Tito, but instead got stuck in prison because he had the same name and surname as a political emigrant. Young Lola (Lana Vukićević) ended up in prison for a minor offense, but the prison guardian Josipa (Nada Gaćešić Livaković) started tricking her with other convicts. Predrag Bogojević (Janko Popović Volarić) was a respectable restaurant owner until the war, but suddenly his Serbian origin in the new Croatian state became a problem: he paid protection to prison guards in vain, other prisoners used every opportunity to make a living, and his family renounced for reckless adultery. Saleswomen Dijana Marić (Ksenija Marinković) and Sara Rogoz (Sandra Lončarić Tankosić) realized that they could not live on a salary in a supermarket, so when they already live in a society where everyone steals, they also decided to rob the post office - unfortunately, an amateur attempt cost is high: freedom. The successful Zagreb Roma (Aleksandar Cvjetković) became friend with Martin, but the skinheads started harassing him and he took revenge on them, which cost him dearly.

The series will surely provoke fierce controversy because the opening of graves is actually a metaphor for digging through the cancerous wounds of Croatian society. Some of the scenes are embarrassingly explicit, such as the one showing how police beatings have not changed at all since the socialist era. It reveals the corruption of politicians, the connection between the media and the government, shameless enrichment, xenophobia, and much more.

If that seems intriguing enough to you, start watching a series that seems to have nothing to do with our television products: hopefully, it won’t be the only one of its kind.

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