BERLINALE 2021 - Tabija (The White Fortress)
BERLINALEIgor Drljaca's The White Fortress is a grounded, emotionally immersive, and tender depiction of love. While on the surface, it may be a cold feature, it does so too slowly warm the coils of its engine to fully brood its thematics in a delicately produced drama.
It is interesting to note that at first, Drljaca's wrestles with genre. However, it is not overly clear of what direction and the ultimate destination this film will arrive at. Spiralling from a kitchen sink drama, grassroots gangster, and finally, a romance drama, does make slightly worry. Still, writer-director Igor Drljača does a magnificent job of welding and intertwining these narratives and thematics to strengthen the overall piece, and of course, individually the arcs present.
For the most part, the piece focuses on Pavle Čemerikić's Faruk, who primarily takes centre stage. Although, Drljaca's feature splits itself into two narratives that ultimately converge into one, with Sumeja Dardagan's Mona running parallel almost. The two respective narratives are given plentiful amounts of depth and layers that craft an incredible amount of personalisation for each character to unravel and personify. The two central performances are nothing short of excellent. Dardagan and Čemerikić's isolated performances brood with angst and emotional depletion. Čemerikić has much of the foil and keeps his head far above the water leading this picture with ease. How the actor develops his character on the screen in an esoteric stance offers much to dissect and ultimately understand. That is not to say that Dardagan feeds on the scrap, not at all. She embodies a different type of angst, that of privilege but with its relative distresses and internalised confrontation that still erupts in a country that cannot offer its youth what they deserve, a testament equally labelled by Čemerikić's character.
When the two meet the film internalises almost with a lack of verbalisation, and the tenderness of the affection begins to blossom. It is these moments when the film takes on its next evolution of perfectly not having to say anything to its audience, instead showing its beauty in all its angles and delicate moments. Long takes and wide shots fill the screen and intoxicate the viewer, and although visually it is used to bring the audience and characters together in emotional immersion, it also subconsciously hits hard when the film reveals its hand at the end of its running time.
That being said Drljaca does have to infuse the piece. He succeeds but it feels somewhat tacked on and superficial when a character’s feelings are forced into the narrative to serve two sides of a coin. To go so far, it might even be inconspicuous for most audiences with subtly being rather underhanded here.
Nevertheless, The White Fortress builds and broods into an internal discourse of passion and travel of affection during its course. Respectively of what that means between the two central characters, the desire, lust and penultimately life that gets in the way. It is a tragic but stunning piece of love and its passionate creation, albeit striving for an utterly outstanding feature.
