‘I REFUSED TO BE MINISTER’ Miki Manojlović on serious machinations at FCS, state of our culture, and considering himself FOOL

The days of one of our greatest actors, Predrag Miki Manojlović, are full of various pleasant obligations at the theatre while the local cinemas are screening his new film, Stric(The Uncle), the debut film of Croatian directors and scriptwriters David Kapac and Andrija Mardešić.

When he is not in front of cameras or at the theatre, he spends his time with his friends or on a mountain outside Belgrade. Manojlović reveals for Kurir what sort of figure his paternal uncle was in his life, and comments on the state of the Serbian culture and why he refused to be a government minister.

What drew you to such an unusual story as The Uncle?

“A good script. David and Andrija gave me a call and then we met up in Zagreb. They sent me the script, which I read in one day and replied that I would like to do it.”

Have you seen the film? Do you feel uncomfortable seeing yourself on the big screen?

“I don’t feel uncomfortable. I usually watch myself when I’m shooting, as well as in the editing room. This time I couldn’t, due to the obligations I had, because the film was edited in Zagreb for a short while, and then on the island of Vis. I first saw the film at the Karlovy Vary Festival. I don’t have any kind of reluctance to see myself on the screen. Perhaps I had it watching myself for the first time in Otpisani (The Written-Off) . It’s good to watch the material from the shoot. It wasn’t possible before. Now everything is recorded electronically, and you can correct not only yourself , but the point of what you’re doing. Those who watch themselves excessively become spoiled. [laughs]”

The Uncle is difficult to watch. What was your experience of it?

“What’s important is whether the audience appreciates the film, not me. It was a smart choice on the part of the directors to shoot everything at a single location, but it’s not in the credits that I shot some of the video-material with my camera.”

Was that your suggestion and idea?

“It was. I have a passion for shooting and know well what the uncle should see and film. I played a little. My first frame that I shot with a film camera was given to me by the great Tomislav Pinter. We were working on Samo Jednom se Ljubi (You Love Only Once) back then.”

Literature and film feature mother and father figures. How did your uncle affect you?

“There’s something interesting there. The uncle in the film takes the people and himself back to the 1980s and his traumatic experience with his own uncle. He either did or did not kill his family. You can read this by viewing the film carefully. It is set in the present day. My uncle was called Andrija. He was my father’s youngest brother. He died in a car accident aged 44, when he hit the only tree on the right-hand side of the Pančevo-Belgrade Road. He lived in the fast lane and liked to joke around.

“One of his jokes was the reason why I was seeing the psychotherapist Vida Jojić without knowing it was because of him. Vida lay the foundations of psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia. I was seeing her to find out why I was afraid of heights. People here believe that I’m afraid of airplanes and that I have a fear of flying. I didn’t like heights, but I didn’t know why, and then I found out. When I was very young, my uncle held me by the neck like a cat, and wanted to throw me down from our house’s first-floor window. That traumatized me. He’d throw me up into the air from the balcony like a ball, and then he would catch me above the abyss. He joked very crudely with me and caused me to have a problem with heights, not airplanes.”

Do you fly now?

“Australia is the only place I’ve never been to.”

Would you like to go there and watch Novak Đoković?

“I’d like to watch him play. I follow his matches and get upset. My witty wife then says, ‘Would Novak get up at 5 a.m. to watch you?’ I don’t think he would do that because he’s a disciplined young man. Nole knows exactly when he gets up and when he goes to bed, and I do not, because such is my commitment to the work that we call acting.”

Last year, audiences could see you in the film Trag Divljači (Trail of the Beast), directed by Nenad Pavlović. Why is it so important to you?

“It’s great to be talking about it because it went a bit unnoticed. Trail of the Beast’s narration has the virtues of an old-fashioned movie. It didn’t aim to be liked by audiences by means of a new aesthetic. Nenad Pavlović wrote the script based on the prose by his father Živorad Pavlović. The prose, just like the film, are valuable in a way that I’m not sure the audience has recognized. In his novels, Živorad Pavlović follows the Jokić family. The film is great because it’s a family drama. It features a State Security employee and a disappointed son and student in the wake of the 1969 protests, who got screwed over by Tito. Then there’s the daughter who her father manipulated into marrying a colleague of his to stop him from getting promotions in the State Security. The character of the father that I play in it is different from the one in The Uncle and is traumatized by cultural senicide.”

We will also see you in Lančana Reakcija (The Chain Reaction), a film by Dragan Bjelogrlić, in which you play Pavle Savić?

“I haven’t seen the film. Pavle Savić was an opponent of making a nuclear bomb, but the government and Aleksandar Ranković were in favour of it. Just imagine the reputation that Yugoslavia used to have, given that both the US and the Soviet Union allowed it to make a nuclear bomb. Can you picture any of the newly formed countries making a nuclear bomb? You can’t. Had our scientists not been exposed to radiation then, we would have had a nuclear bomb.”

What is the future of our cinema, and does it lie in co-productions? When are we going to make something great as a country?

“We have a general problem when it comes to film. This is my opinion. It’s not a good idea for Film Centre Serbia to not be free and instead be an outpost of the Ministry of Culture. So, the ministry should even decide which film to support and with how much money. There’s insufficient awareness of the fact that films can serve to promote a country to a great extent globally. The Romanians understood this first, and then we had a new wave of authors. Not to mention Israel, South Korea, and China. Young people need to get a chance, but it takes money for them to make anything. We cannot have the FCS which announces a funding competition in which 52 people are the decision-makers. Your country needs to support you for co-productions. Who are the 52 geniuses that we place our trust in? Things are set up wrong. I left because of that. There are people who are on the committee and see a script, reject it, and then shoot their own film using parts of that script. An example would be Dara iz Jasenovca (Dara of Jasenovac). These are serious machinations. The FCS needs to be an independent body.

“It’s not good to have a government that’s constantly afraid of film and the Board of Directors’ majority consisting of the members of the ruling political party. It was the same when the Democrats were in power. The government is whining, and everyone knows that, but culture is the cheapest and a key to our being. Investing in culture is the cheapest way to raise the quality of living . It’s hard to wrap your head around that. Especially when you’re a government minister and don’t want to rock the boat. Since 1945 and the first minister, Mitra Mitrović, up until the present day, it has made no difference who’s had that post, because no one has changed anything. There are countries that get what culture is. Paris used to be grey just like the other cities in France, and then they were whitewashed and have become bright and beautiful. There’s also the Cannes Festival. The minister of culture can affect many things.”

What about the laws?

“The labour and culture laws are misaligned. For those who voted in favour of these laws in 2009, they’re still not incompatible. If a politician wants to change that, he’s a goner in no time.”

Rumour has it that you too were offered to be the minister of culture.

“That’s right.”

Why did you refuse?

“In order to accept something like that, I’d need to be given carte blanche. You know what that means – all rights. It didn’t turn out that way. I’m a fool. When I get into something, I get in all the way. According to your colleagues, I’ve been an ambassador and the minister of culture many times. I’m sick and tired of this speculation. I didn’t say who offered the post to me. Everyone thinks it was Vučić, but it wasn’t.”

Who offered it to you?

“That is a story that precedes the present day.”

Kurir.rs/ Ljubomir Radanov