Mihailo Lalić is the most important novelist from Monte Negro who, after being pushed into the background in his home country, was completely re-evaluated at the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth when the Monte Negro Cinematheque made new copies of films based on his novels



In the first years after the breakup of Yugoslavia, there were not too many fans of works that described the crimes of Chetniks (Serbian as well as those from Monte Negro) during the WW II, even though Lalić wrote about crimes carried by the Muslim police and Albanian nationalists as well as partisans whose member he had been himself. He was born in a small village in Monte Negro Trepča in a poor family. Lalić had to walk for kilometers to get to school and when he arrived to Belgrade in 1933 to study law, he also had to start working and began his career as a journalist. Later he began publishing his first literary works in newspapers and magazines as well as hold lectures about Marxism, which led to his arrest. In the beginning of war, in 1941, he returned to Monte Negro and joins the partisans. In mid1942, he got captured by the Chetniks and he is first put in prison in Kolašin and afterwards sent to the camp in Belgrade, followed by a camp in Greece. He managed to escape in 1944 and joined the Greek partisans. In late 1944, he returned to Monte Negro.

Even though due to this particular engagement after the fall of socialism, Lalić was often labeled as a writer devoted to the former regime and an advocator of Communist ideas, his excellent novels are in fact much more complex and often were not at all accepted by the socialist muckety-mucks. He was primarily interested in the tragic events in Monte Negro during the WW II, where conflicts, divisions and crimes caused the abatement of former national ideals. On the other hand, new ideals, which were supposed to be introduced by the partisans, did not take have a chance to take root due to the fact that even they themselves ended up losing their faith in the values for of which they had joined the war in the first place. The horrors of war are a very impressive stage for Lalić’s novels but his attention is focused on the psychological processes happening in the heads of individual people (primarily partisans) who due to the horrific events and overall hopelessness begin to lose their humanity. Therefore, he often uses the procedure of an inner monologue, which is very hard to transfer to the film medium. This makes it very hard to make film adaptations of his complex works that are far from idealizing ideology and are primarily focused on extreme efforts to survive at any cost.

The first director to try and make such a demanding adaptation of one of his novels for film was Zdravko Velimirović (1930 – 2005) in 1968, whose specialty were film adaptations of novels. He chose Lalić’s most complex and highly praised novel Mount of Lament (Lelejska gora, 1957, second version in 1962), about an idealistic student who joins the partisans but soon remains alone and prone to all sorts of psychological tortures and even hallucinations. The director managed to create a suggestive atmosphere in his portrayal of the events in the protagonist’s life and formulate a clear story, but did not entirely succeed in identifying the right way to show the psychological processes that Lalić impressively created through his literary process.

In 1973, Radomir Šaranović (1937 – 2001), who until then directed several successful short films and was also a successful theatre director, directed his feature film debut that was the film adaptation of Lalić’s first novel The Wedding (Svadba, 1950) in co-production with USSR (Studio Dovženko from Kiev). It is a story about the destinies of prisoners in Kolašin. Šaranović did not always find the best way to transfer the literary elements to film, especially in scenes in which he used static shots of talking about crucial events in the relationship of men towards war instead of showing the actual dramatic events. Nevertheless, in sequences dominated by the excellent main actor Dragomir Bojanić – Gidra and in the final moving action scenes there are some good moments and examples of the right cinematic expression.

By far the best film adaptation of Lalić’s prose is Manhunt (Hajka, 1977) directed by one of the most important Serbian film authors Živojin Pavlović (1933 – 1998), based on the novel with the same title from 1960. The story is again set at the beginning of WW II in Monte Negro and it is about the surviving soldiers of the purposefully cheated and destroyed partisan squad who at first want to hide and wait for spring in order to start their revenge. However, when they find out that the Chetniks are on their way to attack the partisan headquarters in Bosnia, they start with their saboteur actions, even though they are quite clear that their chances for a military success and survival are slim. Pavlović managed to create an impressive adaptation for film of Lalić’s relationship to people from both war sides, without black and white simplification and thus we witness very complex characters. Some partisans are also weak, afraid and indecisive and therefore very far from an idealized portrayal of heroes. However, their choice to survive their hard chosen destiny until their end calls for certain respect. As for their enemies, it is hard to understand their motivation that caused them to take the opposing side, but in their nuanced portrayal it is shown how their decisions gradually lead to crime and complete dehumanization. And so Pavlović created highly impressive scenes of violence carried out by Chetniks and the scenes of those deaths carry a special emotional charge much the director values human life. Pavlović also shows his great skillfulness in directing each and every detailed and precise scene as well as in creating memorable characters thanks to his impressive cast crew lead by the brilliant Rade Šerbedžija and his convincing partners Pavle Vujisić, Lazar Ristovski, Miki Manojlović, Boro Begović and the Dutch actress Barbar Nielsen. Moreover, the support roles are played by some great acting names such as Jovan Janičijević - Burduš, Bata Živojinović, Petar Kralj, Ljuba Tadić, Zaim Muzaferija and Zvonko Lepetić. (Tomislav Kurelec)