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Tribeca Movie Review: The Optimists
Posted on Wednesday,
May 9th, 2007 at 10:03 am
by: Francisco Saco

The following film was screened at the 2007
Tribeca Film Festival.

The Optimists (Optimisti)
Spotlight, Narrative
2006, Serbia
Dir: Goran Paskaljevic

Everything’s good and getting better, or so the characters in The Optimists think. With a vivid sense of humor, irony, and sadness, director Goran Paskaljevic creates five stories of people struggling to overcome their harsh realities, while fighting to see the good in their endeavors. Paskaljevic presents a crew of confused individuals, blinded by their hopes of prevailing, that continue to get stuck in unfortunate situations. With a magnificent performance by Lazar Ristovski, from Kusturica’s Underground, the film is able to transmit tales of twisted, amusing episodes contrasted with sorrowful experiences. The persons within the film have something going against them, and they either confront this reality with humor or despondency.

The first tale narrates the story of a town torn apart by a flood. We see the townspeople congregate in a huge warehouse for shelter. They are visited by a man claiming to be a hypno-therapist, who says he can cure them all. Accused of being a thief, the man is arrested and taken away, but it is revealed that he is actually a harmless escape patient from the local mental institution.
The second tale, and the most harrowing, concerns itself with a girl who is raped by her father’s boss. The father thinks he can kill his boss and get away with it, but realizes his boss owns the entire town. In the end, it is the man and his daughter who end up apologizing.

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GORAN PASKALJEVIC - Premijera novog filma -OPTIMISTI -
Trijumf "Optimista" u Valjadolidu
29 oktobar 2006

Film Gorana Paskaljevica "Optimisti" trijumfovao je na 51. medunarodnom festivalu u Valjadolidu, koji je završen u subotu uvece, prenosi Beta."Optimistima" je dodeljen gran pri Zlatni klas, a Lazar Ristovski je dobio nagradu za najbolju mušku ulogu. Paskaljevicev film je nagradio i žiri mlade publike, saopštio je juce Nova film.Trijumfu filma na ovom uglednom svetskom festivalu prethodio je izvanredan prijem i kod kritike i kod publike. Paskaljevic je pre deset godina vec osvojio najviše priznanje festivala u Valjadolidu za film "Tuda Amerika".
Gran pri podrazumeva i novcanu nagradu za pomoc distribuciji filma "Optimisti" (35.000 evra), koji pocinje da se prikazuje u bioskopima širom Španije od 5. novembra.
"Srpski reditelj Goran Paskaljevic se istakao na festivalu svojim najnovijim filmom 'Optimisti', koji je usaglasio publiku i najzahtevnije kriticare", piše danas dnevnik Mundo.
"S genijalnim glumcem Lazarom Ristovskim, Paskaljevic je napravio izuzetan film, lucidan, tužan i duhovit istovremeno", navodi Pais.
"Velicina ovog filma leži u njegovih pet originalnih prica (scenario Vladimir Paskaljevic), koje surovim humorom oslikavaju lažnu nadu", ocenjuje kriticar lista Razon.
"Snimljen vizuelno upecatljivo, ali nijednog trenutka pretenciozno, film 'Optimisti' istice izvanrednu kreaciju Lazara Ristovskog", navodi ABC.
Manuel Peres, generalni direktor Nacionalne televizije Španije (TVE) vec je najavio otkup ekskluzivnog prava da film "Optimisti" prikaže u svom redovnom programu, posle prikazivanja u bioskopima.

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Toronto Festival Daily:

The Optimists tears illusions asuder

Raising healthy, clear-headed cynism to an art form, The Optimists is an ambitious and darkly comic five-part film by the Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic. A freestyle interpretation of Voltaire's Candide, it is a scatching, surreal take on Paskaljevic's homeland and the injustices and self-deceptions of our contemporary world.

Each story features the veteran actor Lazar Ristovski in a different role - one of them that of the corpse. The first begins when a hypnotist arrives ina village that has been destroyed. Clearly a huckster, he preaches to the residents that if they train themselves to think confidently, anything is possible. Soon they are all chanting lke cultish zombies.

In the second story , the daughter of a foundry worker is raped by the owner, but when her father arms himself and seeks to avenge his boss - who clearly runs the town - responds with swift brutality.

The third vignette concerns a young man addicted to gambling who squanders all his uncle's money, which had been saved for his father's funeral. He resents his stingy uncle who sells watermelons and fancies himself God's gift to his in-laws. The young man gradually forges a friendship with an old woman who has mastered the slot machines - her winning streak almost as pathological as his unrelenting losses - and urges her to use her providence for good.

The fourth tale is a wonderful Grand Guignol involving the proprietor of an abattoir whose young son is overly enthusiastic about killing animals. The father locks his grisly progeny away, but a visiting doctor naively diagnoses this as unnecessarily cruel and liberates the quiet lad, who promptly hunts for blood.

Finally, we see a tour bus full of gullible people led into the middle of nowhere by a con man posing as a faith healer. When he abandons them, his singing, positive-thinking minions continue to search for the healing spring their leader promised would cure them.

Paskaljevic's film is like aperfectly mixed tonic that washes away our delusions about how much control we really have in our lives. It is also a vital antidote for wartorn Serbia, where , after years of conflict, the people are more vulnerable to exploitation and pernicious false hopes than most.

Tering all comforting illusions asunder, The Optimists is a strange and wonderful illustrations of Candide's assertion that optimism "is the madness of maintaning that everything is right when it is wrong".

JON DAVIES