Tajvanska kanasta (1985)

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   Mario G

   "This was an attempt to make a film about one man's midlife crisis. I used my friend, architect M., as a model. He was always in an extremely good mood, positively exalted, although it was clear that things were steadily getting worse in his life. In terms of his creative endeavors, he achieved a lot less than he thought he should have; he was constantly in debt, his family life was a mess, primarily because he was always having affairs with young, far too young girls.
   At that time, me and my circle of buddies, mostly actors in their 40s, were sensing the problems aging would bring, and we tried to turn all of that into jokes. Some of the jokes we made would nevertheless have a serious upshot. Once we decided - I cannot remember anymore whose idea it was - to play a game called 'Foolish men'. The game got its name because it consisted of hiding one match among five participants (in one of their hands). The sixth player was supposed to guess where the match was, and his score depended on how many attempts he needed to find it. It was a really stupid game. But we altered it somewhat - we would hide ten matches, so everyone had one match in each of his hands. Thus the chosen 'prey' would choose correctly every time! The goal was to convince the 'victim' - and that was the whole point of the exercise. I remember one of our female friends even agreed to go all the way to a telephone booth a few streets away and choose the hand from there. We were accusing her of allegedly looking at our hands while we were hiding the match, and she earnestly tried to convince us that she was not...
   Then we invented a card game, a game with no rules, and we called it, if I remember correctly, 'Shigumitzu canasta'. The idea was to lure people into playing a game for which they - out of ignorance, fear of looking stupid of whatever - would claim to know very well. We would then get them to sit at a card table, and then we would start praising their skill, intelligence and let them 'win' small amounts of money. Our man would then feel more confident by the minute and begin telling stories about how his 'power' started showing even when he was just a child, or how he was capable of predicting the future and so on. We would admire him loudly and from then on we could sculpt his story any way we wished...
   All of that was the basis of the story of Taiwan Canasta. The character of Saša Belopoljanski, an artist down on his luck, whom nobody understands, is a combination of our 'victims' and the mentioned M. Added to that was a social framework I would call a 'crimo-cracy', and that was all. The problem was to find actor for the starring role. I wanted Boris Komnenić to play Saša. Boris was an extremely funny young actor, but he was not suited for the part because of his age (he was in his early 30s at the time). However, my assumption was that in a movie everything can be performed, including the age of a protagonist. And I was not wrong.
   The main scene of the film was an improvisation. Namely, Voja Brajović and Josif Tatić were the real authors of the 'Shigumitzu canasta' and Radko Polič creatively joined in. We made two doubles of this take which lasted for more than 10 minutes and was a static wide shot. I think that the very first attempt made it to the film.
   We also had the rock band 'Ekatarina Velika' in this film. Magi and Milan performed in important roles. Both of them died soon afterwards, as did my friend M. The artworks of Saša Belopoljanski, sculptures called 'Movables' were made by the artist Milija Nešić. He still exhibits them in art shows."
   
   Goran Marković 8 years 1 month ago

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