Belgrade. Film student Tomislav Gotovac arrived from Zagreb to make an underground film, and survives by sleeping over at the apartments of local women and filming sex scenes with them. Among them is an American woman. After running naked on the streets, Tomislav is arrested and the authorities shave his beard and head bald. Broke and abandoned, Tomislav goes to a village of his next girlfriend, but when he cheats at her, she takes his pistol and shoots him.
A patchwork of everything, but overall nothing in particular, Lazar Stojanovic's only feature length film, "Plastic Jesus" is a cult movie whose controversies are inversely proportional to its quality and coherence. The story—that is what little of it is there—revolves around the misadventures of experimental artist Tomislav Gotovac sleeping with Belgrade women while making an underground film, but it could have been told as a 30 minute film, yet for some reason Stojanovic decided to add 40 minutes of historical archive footage, to the point of excess, which comes across as being lazy since they outnumber and overshadow the main plot. Moreover, these archive footages do not seem to play much role in advancing or enriching the thin story, and since they mostly consist out of video footage of dictator Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Chetniks and Ustashe, it seems more like a desperate attempt at creating some controversy out of nothing as a compensation for the emptiness of the film. The opening scene of Gotovac holding a piece of paper, looking into the camera and reading out loud the entire cast and crew of the movie is sympathetic and funny, and here and there some other amusing bits appear—for instance, when one of his girlfriends tells Gotovac: "I wouldn't want you to go to America, there are too many people like you there."
But most of the scenes are strained and forced, for instance the one where a little girl is sitting, while Gotovac is playing an erotic movie he made on the screen behind her via his movie projector, until the mother arrives in the room and scolds him. It is peculiar as to why some of the archive footage was included. For instance, audio clips from the opening of Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" are shown, just intercut with one of Gotovac's girlfriends driving on a motorcycle instead of Hitler, as the camera mimics the angle of said movie by showing her from the back. But what is the point? How does it connect with the rest of the story? It is also interesting to see footage of dictator and Nazi collaborator Ante Pavelić proclaiming the re-emergence of a Croatian parliament during World War II, which ends with all the members raising their hands in a Fascist salute. As well as images of dead people, probably victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp. But this is not a historical lesson, nor does it cover World War II as a topic. So all this is as arbitrary and relevant as inserting random clips of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By including footage of Josip Broz Tito, and juxtaposing it with footage of '68 student protests, Stojanovic implies that even Tito abandoned his ideals from the youth, which was probably a contributor to the reason why he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Yugoslav authorities. "Plastic Jesus" shows why experimental films age the worst, since it seems like someone wanted to make a short movie, but then just slapped random archive footage to prolong it into a feature, but without a sense for purpose.
Grade:+
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