Štrpci, Bosnia, 1 9 9 3. A train from Serbia stops unexpectedly at the site, and a Serb paramilitary enters and asks for everyone for their identity documents. A man in the train compartment obliges and remains silent when a paramilitary soldier asks a young lad without documents if he is a Bosniak. Just then another passanger, Tomo Buzov, a retired officer, intervenes and orders the young lad to remain seated, while he stands up and is taken away by the paramilitary and other Bosniak passangers out on the field. The train then continues its journey.
The first film adaptation about the Štrpci massacre, Nebojsa Slijepcevic's short film "The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent" unravels like a modern contemplation about passivity and integrity when faced with a crisis situation, as well as the 'bystander apathy effect'. A concise, quality and minimalist film that starts off with a train stopping unexpectedly, and a man (Goran Bogdan) observing through the window what is happening—everything is only hinted at (a paramilitary unit boards the train and asks passangers for documents; military trucks seen through the window), but the suspense is subtly growing, and the build-up is exquisite, since everything is clear. The paramilitary soldier asks the protagonist: "What do you celebrate?" When the man replies with "6 May", the soldier let's him off the hook, since it is the Serb-Orthodox holiday of Đurđevdan (Saint George's Day, as opposed to the Catholics who celebrate it on 23 April), but then starts harassing a young lad without any documents. And then the real hero stands up, Tomo Buzov (excellent Dragan Micanovic), who protests and defends the lad: "I'm a retired officer. What kind of an army are you supposed to be? You just remain seated!"—his idealistic stance and act of kindness, almost as some sort of a knight, is magnificent and offers that forgotten awe from the power of heroism. However, Slijepcevic made a strategic error by not depicting neither the execution of these passangers nor the sound of shooting. Instead, the train just resumes its trip, the man from the beginning smokes a cigarette, the end. Ultimately, at 13 minutes, the movie is too short for such a topic, and is missing the second half, the murder. Another flaw is that Tomo is the supporting character in his own story, which feels somewhat unbalanced and with undue weight.
Grade:++
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