ZILLION film :: White Suit : Belo Odelo


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WHITE SUIT THE NOVEL

The White Suit The White Suit a short novel by Lazar Ristovski, was written based on the script from the homonymous film, and represents a finale of a major project d'auteur, quite unique in the cultural environment in our country. Producer, scriptwriter, director and main character of the film The White Suit, Lazar Ristovski also tried his hand at writing showing, in a perfect way, that where talent and high professionalism are a prerogative, versatility need not be an obstacle in creating works of art that possess certain artistic value. Similar examples are hard to find here, and globally actor and writer Sam Sheppard might be quoted as an approximate and very charming reference.

In the novel The White Suit, just like in the film script, the proven recipe used with success for nearly two decades in our films and theaters was chosen - you put together different characters in one place: a train, a bus or an underground and then you let them speak and operate - something is bound to come out of it. This scheme provided Lazar Ristovski with firm ground for evolving the story of a little man - expandable element in the framework of local and world history. The writers view of the world, a punning setting on wheels, is backed in the novel by the melancholic-comical meditations of the lead character, with his naive considerations on the fate of the world in which he also has a small, unimportant role, and, above all his courage to play out this role to the end, whatever it is.

The quick alternation of tragic and comical images dominated by elements of melodrama and fantasy, street humor based on gags and witty, but also on "delayed effect" dialogues, the geographic mentality with all its fascination and horrifying sorrow, all this has been packed - with more or less success - into the ancient cliché' based on the belief that man sees his life flash by like film scenes in the moment of dying. Hence, "two days in two seconds" lived by sergeant major Sava comprise all the opposing elements that make an average human life: love and death, joy and sorrow, weddings and funerals. Brilliant episodes have been reached in several points of the novel: the encounter with the brother in Flat Village, Carmen at the train compartment door, or the Nušic-like scene with the captain and the telegram. The episode with the beautiful Romanian woman at the train window, while the protagonists stares at her behind and meditates on the human philosophy and its effects, is an outstanding quote of the unmatched Rabelais.

(Part of the introductory note by Ljiljana Djurdjic)

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