Serbia's official nomination for the 2008 Oscars, The Trap (Klopka) is a film noir morality tale that takes no prisoners. The version being screened in Taipei is dubbed into German (the film was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival under the title Klopka — Die Falle), but as there are probably few in Taiwan for whom hearing the original Serbo-Croatian is a big issue, it probably doesn’t matter too much.
The Chinese title of the film translates as “Saving Nemanja” (搶救紐曼亞), which gives some indication of the plot, but the real meat of the film is expressed in the German title. Mladen (Nebojsa Glogovac) is a crew foreman working on a stalled construction project on the outskirts of Belgrade. He is a good husband and a good father to his son Nemanja (Marko Djurovic); a moral man who faces his less-than-rosy economic situation with fortitude and good humor. Then he discovers that his son has a heart condition that will almost certainly kill him if an expensive operation is not performed. This is the trap: as a loving father he must get the money to save his son; as a proud and moral man, the effort to get the money, first by borrowing, and ultimately through a terrible criminal action, will in the end destroy him. It is only one tiny step from his bedrock of certainty into a confused world where the life of his son is pitted against everything he knows that is decent and right. Once this step is taken, there is no going back.
Golubovic pushes the story forward relentlessly, portraying Mladen’s betrayal of his own sense of justice and the final and bloody retribution that he brings on himself without sentimentality and without mercy.
The plot is not without contrivance, but The Trap is not a thriller in the conventional sense, but rather a dramatic presentation of a moral dilemma. Glogovac balances the intrinsic seriousness of his character with humor (in a beautifully crafted relationship with his son), and his appalled realization of what he is turning into. As his relationship with his wife, Marija (Natasa Ninkovic) is subject to the increasing pressure of fear and deceit, Mladen turns to alcohol and violence.
The presence of Anica Dobra, who played the lead in Love and Other Crimes recently released in Taipei (and still playing at second-run cinemas), is an added treat as a woman who finally gives Mladen the money to save his son, an act of generosity that ironically pushes Mladen to his final destruction.
Mladen’s penurious world of suburban Belgrade is constantly contrasted against the luxurious lifestyle of the mobsters with whom he is forced to become involved. His little red tin-pot car from the communist era is dwarfed by gigantic SUVs with tinted windows in a recurrent motif that underlines the essential unfairness of society.
There is much in The Trap to be enjoyed, not least the craftsmanship of the story-making and a number of fine performances that more than make up for the pessimism, the drab backdrop and the palette of grays and browns.VIEW THIS PAGE
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