REBELLIOUS, REJECTED AND BROKEN DOWN: DEFEAT OF THE INTELLECTUAL IN THE FILMS OF MILOŠ RADIVOJEVIĆ
Posted: Sep 30th 2008
Author: Ivan Velisavljević
Miloš Miša Radivojević (1939) is often seen as an author formed in a conflict between mainstream story-driven movies and radical experimentation with the film form. The thesis of this essay is that actually all Radivojević’s movies are built around the same nucleus: a character of an intellectual caught in a number of personal conflicts (conformity/rebellion, fight/retreat, illusion/truth) that end with his defeat. These conflicts in Radivojević’s films have always been a part of the socially critical attitude and raised fundamental questions of their time, whether is was the responsibility of an intellectual in the society or the question of journalist’s ethics. Arguments that support this thesis are found in all Radivojević’s films, with special focus on Kvar (Breakdown, 1978), a story about the TV-journalist whose dissatisfaction with his personal life and continuing professional disagreement with the editor result in a rash on his penis. The essay also deals with the controversy created by the scenes of female and male nudity which caused numerous TV-viewers and critics to protest against the film. This controversy illustrates the cultural background against which the protagonists of Radivojević’s films, but their creator too, had to rebel.
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