SYNOPSIS
Its Yugoslavia 1999. NATO bombing has already started. The grey of autumn and the distance sound of bombings. Houses on fire.
Life has to go on. Money still is a necessity.
Enter Vlada a truck driver. He has been hired together with other drivers to drive unmarked trucks from one location to another.
Just drive. No stopping. No question asked.
And this is the third time hes been doing so.
REVIEW
What is it at the back of the truck
A burning car blocking the original route has made Vlada take an alternative road which he is not familiar with. This has taken him into a few encounter with some of his countrymen and exhibit what the war has done.
But the metal thudding sound from the back of the truck still there and Vlada is not allowed to check what it is. He does not have the keys anyway.
The metal thudding
It adds creepiness into it all. Not being able to know whats in the cargo. A policeman have stopped but leaves straight away leave after reading the job letter given to Vlada from his employer. A kid who Vlada gives a ride to Belgrade ask him what is in the cargo and whether that freaks him out or not. It is obvious from what his face is showing.
But Vlada has no choice. He got a pregnant wife and a teen son who he got to feed in this time of war. The reveal in the end shocked him.
What is really behind the truck? You just have to figure it out by yourself.
SPOILER REVIEW
A search into Wikipedia, I have found which event exactly the film has taken from. It is in the Kosovo War when Serbian Milosevic conducted Albanian ethnic cleansing back in 1998 and 1999. The bodies of around 700 to 1000 people were buried close to the site of the execution.
It is when he realised NATO will intervene that he hired truck drivers to transfer the bodies out of the Albanian villages to the Serbian-controlled areas in Bosnia.
The rebellious future generation
The tree have grown from the walnuts he carried and died with.
It is almost a symbol of how every sacrifice must be for something. A tree gives shade, oxygen and fruit and wood for use when it finally died out. A question to be asked whether if dying in a war is truly worth it and necessary.
Unlike the ‘video game war’ label that Vlada gives to the war that is going on around them.
The camera pans to this tree when Vlada tells his son about Leka and Bane. Have they brought back the walnut tree from the Sutjeska?
Ultimately Vlada is carrying the load of his family and the future of his son. The burden of the fate of his country. The youngsters starting to express their rebellion through music. A sign of hope, if any of them learn anything from all this mess.
It is maybe why Vlada gave his father's (Leka) WWII lighter to the kid who hitch a ride to Belgrade. A lighter that says 'While the Sutjeska's (a river in Bosnia and Herzegovina) water flow. 1943-1958'. In exchange he gives him his band's demo tape and at the end into Vlada's son posession. That is how the youth rebellious propaganda being spread at the time such as that. From one band to Vlada's son also thinking of forming a band of his own.
Dead children speaking
In one shot, Vlada's truck ran parallel with the hooker who just done with her job in the morning. Is the director trying to show that both of them are doing the same heinous service to support the ethnic cleansing?
Or maybe it is a symbolic way that Vlada passing the torch (lighter) to the next generation while he has been left with no choice to do what is being done. Like the hooker.
While the metal thudding, the half-eaten lollipop, the color pencils and the marble dropped from the back of the truck is the dead children speaking. How they are being cleansed to ensure they wont grow as the future generation and lead a resistance movement.
While Vlada gets ready for the fourth job. Even afer knowing what is the cargo.
“When in need use it again - Battle of Popina 1941” - The young generation being used as the pawns of war? Like how 17 year old Leka and Bane? Like the shot where the kids playing around the monument?
My theory of the metal thudding
I can be from the bodies being stacked up and one of them with marbles in their pockets and one by one dropped onto the floor of the container making that metal thudding sound. The same sound being heard when Vlada was cleaning it and a marble rolled by him.
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