Belgrade, 1 9 5 4. Zoran (10) is a little kid living in an apartment with his parents, grandmother, aunt and uncle. His father gets fired from the theatre when he played a piano for the leading opera singer, causing the mother to become jealous and slap the singer. Zoran daydreams about his idol, Tito, the Yugoslav leader, and one day wins a school trip to Tito's hometown Kumrovec after writing the best homework with the title "Why I love comrade Tito". Zoran boards a train with twenty other kids. Once in Zagreb, their tour guide Raja orders them to march by foot to Kumrovec. Along the way, Zoran is disappointed by his crush, the older Jasna (14), who fell in love with an older lad, Kangaroo. Zoran stays behind in the forest due to exhaustion, and later even goes to a church, causing anger from Raja. Once in Kumrovec, Zoran holds a speech on the stage, proclaiming that he loves his parents, his school friends and even Johnny Weissmuller more than Tito. Raja hangs himself. In Belgrade, Zoran gets a letter of invitation to Tito's birthday, but once there, Zoran is uninterested in Tito and only looks for food on the table.
Goran Markovic's fifth and arguably best film, "Tito and Me" is a subversive Communist critique disguised as an ironically gentle, innocent and simple comedy seen through the eyes of the 10-year old kid protagonist, Zoran. While it relies on the repertoire of nostalgic films about childhood and the past, "Tito and Me" becomes more and more critical of Zoran's idealization of Tito, slowly transforming into a sober tale about growing up and outgrowing dogmas, since Zoran's trip to Tito's hometown Kumrovec becomes an Odyssey in which he will get doubly disappointed by both his love for Tito and his love for the girl Jasna. The first half of the film is the best, since it abounds with numerous comical ideas (Zoran is so hungry he starts eating pieces of the wall, leaving holes in the wall of his home; Zoran "mimicking" Tito's hand gestures while watching a promotional film in the cinemas; Zoran observes Tito on a black and white photo on the classroom wall, but in the next scene, Zoran is surprised that Tito is "gone" from the photo, and then Tito suddenly enters the classroom, but nobody can see him), creating an amusing 'slice-of-life' depiction of that era, whereas Anica Dobra is great in the role of the mother. Not all episodes lead to a point, though: for instance, the subplot of Zoran's father having lost his job in the theatre and working now in a night club, doesn't play a role later on and feels rather superfluous. The second half, revolving around the protagonist's trip to Kumerovec, falters a bit. It still has a few good jokes and moments (a great match cut from a girl reading Zoran's homework in school to Zoran's dad continuing reading the rest of the sentence in his home; tour guide Raja disguising himself as a ghost in a castle to scare the kids during the night), but the ending feels rather incomplete and vague, failing to reach some more satisfying conclusion, and the absence of Zoran's parents for the rest of the film's hour is palpable. The movie is sweet and very good, and yet, there is still something missing to be considered an all-time classic.
Grade:+++
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