Film Review: The Horseman (Konjanik, 2003)

Ivan Aralica is certainly not the greatest Croatian literary author of the 20th Century, but in the last quarter of that century, he was one of the more popular and, in the very last decade, thanks to being the unofficial chief ideologue of Croatian president Franjo Tuđman during the country's struggle for independence, he was certainly the most influential. His importance can be seen in the fact that Aralica has the honour of having three of his novels adapted into films – a feat unprecedented and incredibly difficult to achieve in cinema as small as Croatian. The last of those adaptations is The Horseman (Croatian: Konjanik), a 2003 epic period melodrama directed by Branko Ivanda.

To understand the significance of The Horseman, one must look at Aralica's other adaptations. Two of his previous novels were adapted into films: Okvir za mržnju, adapted into the 1987 Yugoslav film Život sa stricem, and Četverored, which was adapted at the very end of Tuđman's era into one of the most controversial and notorious films ever made. These works dealt with the repression or crimes of Communist Yugoslavia. Konjanik, on the other hand, written at the very beginning of Aralica's career in 1971, belonged to the so-called "Morlak trilogy", dedicated to the troubled history of his native region of Dalmatia in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

The film is set in 1747 somewhere in the hinterland of Northern Dalmatia. As the opening credits tell us, the region was a boundary between Islam and Christianity, the latter further divided between adherents of Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The Catholic Christianity is represented by the Republic of Venice, while Islam is represented by the Ottoman Empire that holds neighbouring Bosnia. Both entities divide the Croat people, including the film's narrator Nikodim (played by Borko Perić), an Orthodox monk who happens to be the brother of the protagonist, the mercenary Morlak soldier Petar Revač (played by Nikša Kušelj).

The film has a prologue set twelve years earlier, when Petar and his brother, whose real name is Ivan, were boys raised in a devout but poor Catholic family. One Christmas, their father wanted his children to eat meat and tried to steal a sheep from a nearby Venetian garrison. He was killed for his attempt, and his house was burned as retribution. During this raid, the boys lose their mother. Some time later, they part ways: Ivan is adopted by the abbot of a nearby Orthodox monastery and later bceomes monk, while Petar is recruited by the very Venetian commander (Božidar Orešković) who had his parents killed.

As years pass, Petar grows up to be a skilled horseman and fierce warrior. This skill is very handy, because, despite a formal peace treaty between Venice and the Ottomans, the area is endemic to opportunistic cross-border raids motivated by plunder. Mujaga Lulić (played by Ivan Vulić), a Muslim feudal warlord of Grahovo, has extra motivations, as he needs large flocks of sheep to impress his suzerain, Džafer-beg (played by Danko Ljuština), and win the hand of his daughter Lejla (played by Zrinka Cvitešić). During one of these skirmishes, Petar not only spares Mujaga's life but decides to defect to his side, convert to Islam, and is sent to Duvno, Džafer-beg's seat of power. There, he happens to see Lejla nude while she is taking a bath, and becomes instantly infatuated, just as Lejla is infatuated with the dashing horseman.

In the end, Petar takes action by killing Mujaga and organising a joint escape with Lejla. They reach Dalmatia, where they have a passionate night in a hut. Petar is, however, still a fugitive, so he contemplates taking Lejla to Lika, a region ruled by the Habsburg Austria. Yet, before this, he thinks he should secure Lejla's future by sending her to the city of Zadar, where she is to be christened as Catholic. This conversion of such a high-profile person is difficult to hide and immediately causes a diplomatic crisis. Ruthless characters on both sides of the border want to solve it in simple ways, at the expense of the two lovers and their lives.

The Horseman was something of a rarity in Croatian cinema – an old-school period epic set long before modern times. Branko Ivanda, the director, is best known for his prolific television work and, due to his leftist beliefs, looked like a somewhat strange choice to pair with Aralica, given the author's reputation as a hard-right Croatian nationalist. Yet he did a nice job, helped by a relatively high budget, a care about actual period detail, and the use of more or less authentic locations both in Croatia and Bosnia. Ivanda, who co-wrote the script with Aralica, put more emphasis on the individual love story and less on the broader 18th Century political, cultural, and religious context. The protagonists are depicted as victims of forces they cannot control, whether it is their own passionate lust or a complex web of intrigues involving nobles, officials, and diplomats.

Ivanda apparently enjoyed the opportunity to direct a genre film, which is a rarity in Croatian cinema. The Horseman, apart from impressive displays of horsemanship, features some swordplay in action scenes. The Dinaric locations make it look like some strange combination of a western and a jidai geki (Japanese period drama). The film was, however, best remembered for having Zrinka Cvitešić, a young and talented actress who was arguably the biggest film star of Croatian cinema at the time and later known for winning prestigious prizes at the London stage. She bravely took part in nude and explicitly erotic scenes, which added to the film's allure.

Sadly, all this effort is compromised by the terrible miscasting of Nikša Kušelj. He might look the part, but he simply lacks chemistry with Cvitešić. The rest of the cast is solid, especially Danko Ljuština, who delivers a regal performance as a Bosniak aristocrat that in some ways sounds very much like Marlon Brando's in The Godfather. Another flaw is the use of an uninspired, cheap-sounding musical score, although ethnologists among the audience would appreciate elements of authentic Croat and Bosniak traditional music.

The biggest problem is the pacing, which makes the plot a little bit overlong and sometimes confusing. This issue affects the character of Andrija (Goran Grgić), a Dubrovnik mercenary diplomat in service of Venetian governor. His noble but ultimately futile mission to save the lives of Petar and Lejla is never properly motivated. This is a feature typical for films from ex-Yugoslav areas that were turned into television miniseries, usually filling in the blanks. Despite these flaws, The Horseman remains a fascinating entry in Croatian cinema, offering a glimpse into a turbulent historical period through the lens of a personal tragedy that is as much about love as it is about the clash of empires.

RATING: 5/10 (+)

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