Živjeti za inat (1973)

To enjoy the beautiful Kadochnikova among the rocks, it is worth it. Due to the exotic and steep orography of the hills where cinematography is risked, the viewer will think of Cappadocia. However, after a few minutes the motif becomes tiring; proto-communism of the tribes versus the enveloping deception of the religion embraced by Petar I of Montenegro; thus, what will populate this film are metaphors of the painful discord between privileging the material realm of the settlers in their present, such as hunger, the bread, clean water and gold that is given to him with open hands, including rioters who aspire to the sword to avenge their children or husbands, all in favor of Yoka's side; and on the other, hope in the construction of the cathedral in which Vladyka Petar I has placed his spiritual longing for life after being abused, beaten, stoned and almost killed; some repeat that their hands are not made for person or prayer while Vladyka questions the regent and then, an endless series of Montenegrin resentments against Austrians or Turks or...if Savu needs blood, if the Turks killed a mother and a tribe; Yoka's wife asks for peace or for the children to be sacrificed and the ceremony in the middle of a wild and snowy slope leads to piling up rifles and coins to pay for the blood that should not be spilled. Money and weapons are returned and an internal brawl calms down but the Turks are on their way and the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church condemns Bishop Peter I as a teacher of evil and depravity. In vain, as will be seen, the end of a dispute was reached after more than 30 years of litigation. In vain. The trail of corpses and betrayals may never have an end. The film stops with the funeral image of Peter I, unable to walk without stepping on dead people in the cathedral that was built, again, in vain. His project of pan-Serbianism remains a historical reference and an input curiosity in times when even barbarism was still disorganized.