MOVIE REVIEW : ‘My Uncle’s Legacy’ Looks at the Evil Excesses of Communism

Krsto Papic’s “My Uncle’s Legacy” (at the Monica 4-Plex) has reportedly been simultaneously the most controversial and the most successful Yugoslavian film ever made. It’s easy to see why on both counts: it unflinchingly confronts the evils of the Communist Party in the 1950s, wielding its power exultantly in the wake of Tito’s triumphant break with Stalin. However, what Papic depicts in his and Ivan Aralica’s adaptation of Aralica’s novel “Framework of Hatred” couldn’t seem more Stalinist in its rigidity and paranoia.

The time is 1987. The camera picks up an elderly man in a bathrobe and pajamas shuffling across a stately Zagreb square. He makes his way to the book-strewn apartment of his nephew, a prominent middle-aged writer, and asks for a glass of water. What he is really asking for is forgiveness of the younger man, whom he has not seen in 36 years. He also asks that a priest officiate at his funeral, a scandalous request for a man who has been a top party official.

We then flash back to 1951, to a rural community a mere four miles from the Italian border. The uncle (Miodrag Krivokapic) is already a party leader, coping on the one hand with a father (Fabijan Sovagovic) who resists the collectivization of the family farm and, on the other, with his nephew Martin (Davor Janjic), an outspoken independent thinker and talented caricaturist who is a student at a small teachers’ college.

Although Yugoslavia’s preeminent younger director Emir Kusturica has called Papic’s film “brilliant,” do not expect the passion and vitality that mark Kusturica’s films, especially his Oscar-nominated “When Father Was Away on Business,” which is set in the late ‘40s as Tito was still struggling to establish his independence from Stalin. Both directors skewer Communist Party excesses, but in Kusturica’s film there is a broader perspective, a greater willingness to forgive. Although there is some warmth, humor and even a little sex in “My Uncle’s Legacy,” it is fundamentally a somber, angry, implacable indictment and settling of scores, and understandably so: born in 1933, Papic, a distinguished veteran filmmaker, is the same age as Martin. (Kusturica was born in 1955.)

Education at the teachers’ college is basically a business of heavyhanded communist indoctrination from a principal and faculty dedicated to ferreting out and punishing the slightest deviation from the party line. It is a place where Martin, who is involved in a budding romance with the beautiful Martha (Alma Prica), is inevitably headed for trouble. It’s no matter that he actually tries to subscribe to the teachings of his uncle, who has raised him; he’s so questioning that he’s vulnerable to being charged with anti-revolutionary acts he has not in fact committed.

Only 17 when the film was shot, Davor Janjic gives a remarkably adult performance, intense and concentrated, and his fellow actors are on a par with him. “My Uncle’s Legacy” (Times-rated Mature) is impressive but bleak, evoking tragedy and loss more than forgiveness and reconciliation.

‘MY UNCLE’S LEGACY’

An International Film Exchange release of a co-production of Uraniafilm (Zagreb) and Stassen Productions (Los Angeles). Executive producers Tomica Milanovski, Ben Stassen. Producer Stassen. Director Krsto Papic. Screenplay Ivan Aralica, Papic, from Aralica’s novel “Framework of Hatred.” Camera Boris Turkovic. Music Branislav Zivkovic. Art director Tihomir Piletic. Costumes Jasna Novak. Special adviser Nikola Babic. Film editor Robert Lisjak. With Davor Janjic, Alma Prica, Anica Dobra, Miodrag Krivokapic, Fabijan Sovagovic, Filip Sovagovic, Branislav Lecic, Ivo Gregurevic, Radko Polic. In Serbo-Croatian, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.