Andrija Mugoša | Ječam žela (Barley) / 2021

the godfather

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stefan Boskovic and Andrija Mugoša (screenplay), Andrija Mugoša (director) Ječam žela (Barley) / 2021 [18 minutes]

 

One of the more recent regions of 20th century Yugoslavia, Montenegro broke away from Serbia only in May of 2006. So it is an exciting moment to see a gay film come out of the still nascent Montenegrin film industry. Andrija Mugoša’s Ječam žela (Barley), however, suggests that being gay in his country is still not an easy thing.

     Jakov (Milivoje Obradovic), who was previously in a seemingly tortured gay relationship with Petar (Momcilo Otasevic), has since broken off the relationship, Petar moving abroad, while he has married Marina (Kristina Stevovic). In short, like so many gay men unable to move out of the closet, he has deluded himself by insisting that he can be happy in a straight relationship. Indeed, he believes throughout the film that he has almost been satisfied, or as he puts it, “has gotten accustomed to his wife, Marina.” And they now have a daughter, Petra, already at the age for baptism.

      And there lies the rub of this movie. It begins, after a vague written statement about man’s need for “security,” with an image of Jakov in the bathroom, carefully trimming his beard and, if nothing else, checking his appearance over and over. His careful grooming has nothing to do with his wife, we soon discern, Marina not even to being able to arouse him to respond with deep hug before breakfast, but is for his old flame Petar, soon to be arriving to serve as Petra’s godfather.

      The very fact that Jakov has chosen his former lover for that role speaks more loudly than anything else that might occur in the film itself. As the godfather in such a religiously traditional society, Petar will now become almost part of the family, a figure who will presumably be expected appear at regular intervals to take part in his godchild’s life. Certainly, Jakov might have suspected, moreover, that the very reappearance of Petar would arouse his smoldering feelings.

      We can only suspect that he has purposely chosen his former best friend almost as a test, a kind of boast to himself and to his friend that he has been able to “redeem” his life. But he is clearly creating a challenge which even the most amateur of psychologists would perceive is simply a sublimated desire to see his lover again. We don’t know why Petar as left the country (as the film description tells us he has), but surely it was, in part, in response in Jakov’s inability to accept their love for one another.

     And once we meet Petar, we discover almost immediately that he is still bitter and in love with Petar, seemingly startled by the news that not only has he married but now has a daughter, information apparently provided him only upon Jakov’s request for him to become her godfather.

     Although Marina knows nothing of their former relationship, and has not even met Petar, we can also perceive from the beginning that she has suspicions about the friendship, particularly given the fact that her husband has obviously spoken of Petar at great length; she knows, for example, that he loves to tango. And as the two men encounter one another once again, whispering to one another in her absence, she overhears her husband’s words: “Stop it please! You’ve just met Marina and Petra this morning.” Evidently, Petar had attempted to reignite their former love.

     Director Andrija Mugoša makes clear how religion and the culture itself reinforce the kind of decisions that Jakov has made, as during the baptism, Petar holding the child—who in his hands has strangely quieted down from her former fussing and crying in her mother’s arms—is asked to renounce Satan again and again, Satan being obviously, according to the Church, part of the lifestyle he has chosen. The priest demands that he reaffirm his belief when we know that the Russian Orthodox Church obviously would not even allow him to remain within its congregation if they knew of his sexual behavior. The images call up the Baptism scene in The Godfather I.

      Marina, however, seeing how beautiful Petra is behaving and enjoying the sanctimony of ceremony, for the first time smiles in pleasure, all her fears seeming to have vanished.

      After the ceremony she visits her sickly mother with Petra, while the two men first stop by a local pond where, as Petar tries again to approach Jakov; they fight.

 

    Back in the house, Jakov again pulls away, pushing off his friend violently only to turn around, grab him roughly, and intensely kiss him. He slams Petar’s head into the bed post before taking another deep kiss. However, as he suggests, they do not have time to engage in sex.

 

      Marina soon returns home, the entire family, with the priest, seated linearly at a long table, the camera capturing their faces, one by one, as if to force the viewer to imagine their inner questions and doubts.  As in so many of such relationships that Jakov has chosen, he will surely be tempted time and again, and may even eventually be so overwhelmed with his homosexual feelings that he cannot maintain his fiction.

 

   Numerous films, long and short, from The Conformist (1970), Making Love (1982), and Maurice (1987) to later feature films and shorts I have written on such as The Ignorant Fairies (2001), Family Outing (2001), Far From Heaven (2002), Three Summers (2006), Awakening (2008), Caught (2008), The Son (2012), Summer Vacation (2012), Dear Dad (2016), and High Tide (2018), to name only a few, show us that gay men who attempt to convince themselves that they are heterosexual by marrying generally do not end up happy, often destroying their families in the process. And from the beautiful, bleak black-and-white images of Mugoša’s film, in which individuals are purposely posed in the corners or the lower edges of the frame, we recognize that Jakov’s future does not promise to be any better.

 

Los Angeles, May 12, 2023 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).