If there had been intelligence and talent, as there were none - and as we have never had either talented intelligence or smart talent in our country - the welcoming ceremony of the Croatian national team in Zagreb would have been entrusted to someone much smarter, and certainly much more talented. For example, Slobodan Šijan comes to mind when I don't have talent.
And this is how it turned out to be an effective remake of Šijan's cult 'Who sings there', a comedy of absurdity that thirty-eight years ago, in the year when the Greatest Son of Our Nations and Nationality died, in a suggestive way anticipated the coming Yugoslav tragedy, and remained a powerful artistic allegory of our downfall. Finally, the legendary old, red Mercedes bus O3500 of the company 'Krstić i sin' is already there anyway, in the hangars of Jadran film in Dubrava, Zagreb, where it has been restored and prepared for rent.
In Šijan's 'Who sings there', based on the ingenious text of Dušan Kovačević, in a rickety bus under the watchful eye of the strict Paja Vujisić, known as Krstić, and in the safe hands of his son Miško, passengers from the deep interior travel to the capital of Serbia, just in time to meet the German planes and the start war. In the remake from 2018, the new open bus of the company 'Bandić i Zet', abbreviated ZET, receives its passengers in front of the glittering building of the new Zagreb airport with the witty name Dr. Franjo Tuđman International Airport, from where he starts his incredible journey of fifteen kilometers and five hours to the city center.
The allegorical inversion is striking - and you noticed - while in the original a poor and unhappy world from a muddy province drives to a shiny, big world city, in the new interpretation a rich, glamorous football star on his way back from the shiny big world, the bus drives to just the heart of the muddy world province. Two years ago, my Mishko drove two kilometers blindfolded for a bet and never scratched the bus! says the proud owner Krstić, then blindfolds his son and this, really, open bus with red and white squares drives blindfolded, backwards, until forty-five for the next five hours.
How does the screenwriter solve this narrative reversal? As a guide in the story, he introduces, of course, a pop singer.
In Šijan, it is the immortal Dragan Gaga Nikolić - who, with that anthology role, writes a tribute to his untalented pop singer Jimi Barka from the movie 'When I'm Dead and White' - and in the Croatian remake, Marko Perković Thompson, the popular and painfully untalented pop singer Jimi Varka. And while in 1980, Gaga Nikolić as a singer on a bus with social dregs is a sketch of a sad provincial ambition that dreams of the lights of a dazzling white world, in the allegorical inversion from 2018, pop singer Marko Perković is the embodiment of a social dregs who dreams of a sad provincial desolation on a bus with white world stars behind the seven mountains, from which the fairies, wolves and hoodlums howl.
From that key, from that place, when at the invitation of Croatian coach Zlatko Dalić and captain Luka Modrić, a hit singer-songwriter enters the bus - and at one point Miško Modrić really takes the steering wheel into his own hands - the film continues to be shot alone, with all the famous lines of Kovačević , which have been functioning as folk proverbs and orthopedic aids of living urban language for almost forty years. And when Mateo Kovačić roared on stage 'Let's go, break out the gun!' so that imbecile hit of the hit singer-singer, 'Pkni pusko, nek', I'm not there, here's the dawn, 'who knows what's coming', I was just waiting for good old Taško Načić to appear from somewhere, so he confidently explained to the conductor Paja: Don't worry, the gun is locked.'
Clearly - we know this from Šijan's film and Chekhov's dramaturgical canon - the gun was not cocked, and it went off on stage in the third act, when Miško pushed Thompson straight from the bus onto the stage in front of a hundred thousand people, to sing his favorite, 'Geni kameni' '. Yes, 'who's singing that over there?'. Dušan Kovačević could hardly do better: the captain of the national team, a suspected false witness and the heads of the football association, the president a petty thief and the executive director a convicted criminal, together with a singer and tax evader sing 'Strong hand and honesty, holy water and baptism'.
After which Vujisić's, you all know it, goes, 'You call my Mishka a liar in front of this world!?'
Until last night, there were idols whose jerseys were being bought by kids in Bangladesh, Suriname and Haiti, megastars to whom the entire floor was worshiping at the Oscars, and to whom world celebrities were devoting motivational messages on Twitter, and Neymar signing autographs in the locker room, youth born in referee compensation of socialism or already deep in independent Croatia, which doesn't even remember the Homeland War, let alone Yugoslavia - 'what duck shit they ate while the war was going on', as Šijano's proud veteran Aleksa Simić would say - suddenly together with a singer-songwriter they sing 'Bad four " heel, scattered us all over the world"!
Was 1945 bad?!? Well, the sun is fucking drooling, uncle Aleksa would say.
Realized and successful young people who earn their living from seven zeros all over Western Europe - out of twenty-three Croatian national team members, only two play in the HNL - cry and lament how the tragic 1945 scattered them all over the world! In the shocking denouement of this comedy of absurdities, we learned that Modrić and company and the 'bad forty-five' barely made it out alive at Bleiburg, so they 'scattered all over the world', from Real, Barcelona and Atlético to Inter and Juventus to Liverpool and Eintracht. that then, never forgetting their 'stone genes', after a full seventy-three years, they would return to their homeland on the bus of 'Krstić and his son'. Well, down the line to those who these days are screwing up the French national team, which is made up of blacks and mulattoes, sing Thompson's Nazi hit song: 'Blue blood, white faces, new chicks are born.'
There is no talent in us, nor, I said, has there ever been, either a talented mind or a smart talent. And while in Šijan's original, travelers from a muddy Serbian province drive to Belgrade just in time to meet the German planes and the start of the war, in this hilarious inversion, the rich stars straight from the podium of the world runners-up drive to a muddy province, just in time to meet the allied planes and the end of the war. More beautiful and powerful allegories of our downfall than the journey of the ZET bus 'Dalić and Son', which we followed in real time on Croatian television - everything from world headlines and breaking news through the airport Dr. Franjo Tuđman to Jelačićeva trg, from 2018 through 1991 to 1945 - it is not there nor will it be.
Like the original, there's no doubt about it, the new 'Who sings there' - 'The Return of Jedvaj', 'The Empire Strikes Back' or whatever it's called - will take its place in the lexicon of national general culture: the legendary ZET's red - the white open bus, in which the Croatian national team members roamed Zagreb's avenues and Donjigrad Vukojebins for five hours, will await restoration in the hangars of Jadran film, and people will still repeat the immortal lines of their favorite heroes thirty or forty years later.
Milan Bandić will be quoted as standing like Bata Stojković with a notebook and a plastic vase leaning against the fence of the congested Freedom Bridge, 'If I were to ask myself, I would drive the bus this way', and Dalić's immortal 'Drive, Miško!', and Kolinda Grabar-Arnerić in they hug with the wet French president and Putin's 'I dad would, son', and the failed provincial businessman Tomo Horvatinčić, who, just like Uncle Aleksa, shouts offended at the HNS Executive Board, 'Who's the poor guy? Am I?! Give me five tickets!', and failed provincial director Dolenčić, when horrified by Thompson's appearance on stage, he threatens, 'You won't be able to do it anymore, you mustn't step on my plow!' and 'Only over me dead!', so he looks for the microphone cable and shouts to his technicians 'Punch, hahaha, punch!'
Or the key, wonderful Thompson's: 'Don't insult me, I'm a pop singer!'
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