The Croatian film Celebration, directed by first-time feature filmmaker Bruno Anković from a script by Jelena Paljan, is nothing if not brave in taking on several challenges. On its modest budget and production schedule, it presents three discrete, distinct moments in its protagonist’s historical past as well as his present moment, where he is, in the autumn of 1945, a soldier hiding in the woods. It adapts a celebrated Croatian novel (of the same name, by Damir Karakaš) with a distinct style and an ambitious theme: that the forces conspiring to make ideological monsters of young men—in this case, those who fought for Nazism in the 20th century—are not only pervasive and powerful, but present still today. The film’s cast and crew are more than up to the task, delivering excellent performances and creating an expressive mise-en-scene from the lush Croatian countryside of the mid-20th century.
The central role, that of the soldier Mijo (played by Bernard Tomić in this adult incarnation), is shown first, wounded and worried, hiding in the woods near a farm in the Croatian mountains in the autumn of 1945. Though the war is over, it would not seem so from Mijo’s predicament. Mijo fears he cannot be seen, and a young woman named Drenka (Klara Fiolić) has been helping him to stay hidden. She tries to convince him to surrender and alludes, ambiguously to an incident involving her brother. But Milo will not surrender, at least not now; bedraggled and wet from the rain, he burrows into his shelter, where his mind takes him back to three earlier moments in time.

It may be a spoiler or it may be a blunt statement of fact to note that from this moment on in the film’s narrative present, literally nothing happens to the protagonist. The film consists from here only of its three flashbacks and does not present any outcome for 1945-version Mijo save for a single-sentence postscript. It’s worth noting, also, that there is very little characterization of Mijo in his present day: he is a soldier in hiding, he is in distress, he has a helper in Drenka. We don’t know for whom he fights or why, what he thinks or why, or what he seeks beyond his own survival.
It’s one of those conundrums of adapting a limited-omniscient work of prose where a narrator can simply impart a protagonist’s thoughts or basic exposition with a few words: in the novel, the narrator refers in the first few pages to his “yellow-brown Ustaša uniform,” and we know as a consequence for which side he fights—Croatia’s fascist and ultranationalist regime that held power during the War. In film there is no direct analogue for such, and exposition must come via some other means. Only here, in the film’s important framing scenes, where the immediacy of Mijo’s plight is privileged, it doesn’t.

The three flashbacks take place in 1933, then 1926, and finally 1941, respectively. In the first of these, an adolescent Mijo (Lars Štern) is forced to abandon his young dog to the mountain’s wolves, and he meets Drenka for the first time; in the second, even earlier, little Mijo (this youngest version played by Jan Doležal) is witness to a similar event: his father abandons his poorly grandfather in the mountains to die alone. We learn from these episodes that Mijo’s family lived under harsh conditions and that his father could be unforgivably cruel. What we are to make of Mijo himself is uncertain. He is in these instances, as a young boy either an unwilling participant or a confused observer.
In the final flashback, in the spring of 1941 Mijo and Drenka join her brother Rude (Nedim Nezirović) for a long trek to join a celebration in town: there is to be a new “Independent State of Croatia” formed and Rude is especially enthusiastic. He already has a pair of stormtrooper boots and a tidy small mustache for the occasion. Rude is in contrast to Mijo a study in youthful male arrogance, preening like a cock and boasting. But even his petulance doesn’t sour Mijo and Drenka’s blossoming relationship, and when the three meet up with a parade of Croatians closer to the celebration, the communal mood is joyous and uplifting.

All of these scenes are shot with convincing performances and an expressive mise-en-scène. The film’s vintage-lens look, natural lighting, and location shooting re-create an authentic and unfiltered setting, one especially impressive for the film’s short (23-day) shoot and modest resources. Scenes like the ones where the three join up with a larger parade involve scores of extras in complex movement across a valley in the mountains. Much credit to director Anković and his team, especially DP Aleksandar Pavlović and set designer Bojan Drezgić, for the film’s distinct, naturalistic visual design.
There’s also a neat trick near the end of the film that employs archival documentary footage of the same “celebrations” that took place in Croatia in 1941 as it declared its independence. History, of course, teaches that that state was little more than a puppet state created by Nazi Germany and run by fascists who targeted Serbs, Jews, Roma, and political dissidents. A brief, single title card appends this note at the film’s end, including the fact that after the War’s conclusion and the disbandment of the puppet state, soldiers like Mijo fled into the mountains. We never see Mijo again.
To a native Croatian audience who might recognize, instantaneously, their country’s geography or, let’s say, Mijo’s scarcely-seen uniform, such a postscript might not be necessary. Without that same historical knowledge of Croatia’s questionable and short-lived “independence,” though, Mijo’s story lacks weight. If the goal is, as the film’s press materials and director states, to “explore the circumstances that lead to the expansion of extremism and right-wing ideology,” that’s an intention that goes mostly unseen and unheard in Celebration. Nowhere is it made apparent that Mijo has been indoctrinated. He has had a hard life and learned harsh lessons from his father; he’s seen his brother joyfully volunteer for Croatia’s independent army. But Mijo himself? I can’t gather from what is presented onscreen that he is, himself, extremist (or centrist), right-wing (or left-), indoctrinated, radicalized, or for that matter, simply much characterized.
As good as the actor’s performance is, and as good as the film’s direction and cinematography are, Mijo seems a man who had bad experiences as a youth and as an adult, the former of which are dramatized, the latter of which, not. The audience is left to assume almost everything about him, and events that might have led to his radicalization are elided. The majority of Celebration’s runtime presents three flashbacks that say only so much about its protagonist’s character, and as a consequence, there’s little time left to understand his circumstance in the present.
Celebration is a film with many strengths, not the least of which are the importance of its subject, its expressive visual design, and its strong performances. It’s also a film that requires more context and exposition than it’s given: in adapting its source novel closely from page to screen, its makers have left some crucial information about his presumed radicalization behind. Only with it could Celebration fully reach its aim: to depict the forces that conspire to make ideological monsters out of innocent young men.