>Reposts welcome
Might as well, will repost these long-winded comments to scare the anti-essay league.
Going back to the Yugoslavian mainstream scene, here's 1982's Tesna Koža or Tight Spot, directed by Mića Milošević, shot by the moody Aleksandar Petković and starring Nikola Simić as "junior clerk" regular guy Pantić, this one is the usual situational comedy about a somewhat idealistic salaryman close to the boiling point working his last years in a dilapidated state-owned office, gradually going mad due to the post-Tito financial meltdown landscape tormenting the country around those years, along with his family (and the state-appointed freeloading tenant).
The movie looks on all angles as the typical crass comedy exploiting singular themes, but once again i'm surprised at the firm hold the Belgrade Theater/Dramatic Arts faculty had around the mainstream movies of this era, while they lacked some of the visual flair and ruthlessness the Black Wave had, this balances out with the quality acting and scene construction; In this project i expected vulgar stuff with a madman and got a well-layered humble pie that boils down to a couple of scenes showcasing the effects of massive devaluation and a head of organization isolated from any supervisor and free from doing any supervising (the most dangerous game)
Pantić is going gradually mad at the problems and his family members, all representing some point of neutral to smart sanity, nag the hell out of this poor salaryman for their everyday problems, but the appeal of the plot here is the development of how the Clerk was born in that world, molded by it, yet unmoving in his stance in trying to be decent as possible despite his near-mental breakdown demeanor. The antagonists here, a personal one in the form of the office's almost-illiterate corrupt leader, and a family one in the form of the perfectionist japanophile english teacher of the youngest son serve as ideological counterpoints, both having their own small arcs showcasing passive and active power systems with the latter having an interesting, benevolent conclusion. 80 minutes pass to see how the man's family (and characters) degrade into an angry mob repeating the same verses, proving his only sanity compass broken.
As in many cases around those years, the movie is made more around the concept of teletheater instead of a conventional movie (as in dynamic camera movement with moderate editing) the cinematography's only point of mention is the, by now distinctive for me, use of cheap film and obscured, cold omnipresent environments i mentioned earlier in a Balkan Spy post (goes very meta in its critique isn't it). Majority of scenes seem to be made for theater: well-made with a defined opening, development, twist/climax, false ending and ending, they certainly don't waste a lot of film nor run time and most actors have a spot to perform well no matter how little time they get. Pretty sturdy for a comedy movie, this puppy turned to be quite successful and spawned 3 sequels, which seems outstanding considering the only thing i saw with more than 2 in that country were crass sex comedies or are they really?
/k/ giving crash courses on the country's history also shines a light in the actual depth of the scripts here, in particular my previous view Balkan Spy, which i should need to take back my comment on its plot's simplicity: That one actually is chuck full of detail about the inner ideological justification of the country's existence and the hangover between its main parties: Royalists vs. Communists.
This film era is all about the acting and somewhat acid situations, with Tight Spot being another one of its pretty decent trademark products. Although i have to mention it's not as dense as it sounds, even features the usual musical acts normal in movies made for the masses, but works with incisive actions good enough to strike the point correctly. A worthwhile place to invest a little time into, even for the kick of it before things get a little more intense a few years later in their decade-long war.