Knowing what banalities our screenwriters are amused by, it is confusing that for years they have been disregarding incredibly exciting stories - local crime tales, mafia sagas, melodramatic plots, and political thrillers that remain cinematically intact. "Rest in Peace" is the first domestic drama product that shows common sense and interest in the themes and stories that surround us, and most of those I have had the opportunity to see have the potential for a feature film.

"This is a robbery! Hands up! Give me those biscuits or I'll glue you to death!" shouts the disguised Sandra Lončarić Tankosić, pointing a 'gun' to stick prices in the store at Ksenija Marinković's back. "You have to drill holes for your eyes or take a thinner stocking," Marinković answers coolly. Thus, two saleswomen in a neighborhood store who found themselves in debt were inspired to rob a post office with stockings on their heads and children's guns in their hands. This is the summary of the fourth episode of the series "Rest in Peace", otherwise a true story from Zagreb that newspaper readers had fun with a few years ago. The two of them really robbed a bank (not the post office as in the series) and then fled with bags full of money - by tram.

We took the episode with the robbers as an example of a good screenwriting flair, but we could also retell another one, such as the one about a Serb from Zagreb who died in prison in the early '90s, during the Zec family executions, in an atmosphere of general alarm, paranoia from snipers and anyone not bearing the Croatian surname. Knowing what banalities our screenwriters are amused by, it is confusing that for years they have been disregarding incredibly exciting stories - local crime tales, mafia sagas, melodramatic plots, and political thrillers that remain cinematically intact. "Rest in Peace" is the first domestic drama product that shows common sense and interest in the themes and stories that surround us, and most of those I have had the opportunity to see have the potential for a feature film. Watching the series, I wondered if it was really possible that no filmmaker was intrigued by the atmosphere of the cities on alert at the beginning of the war or that no one noticed that bittersweet story about bank robbers. Couldn’t they be some kind of our transitional Thelma and Louise, no longer cashiers who want to go to sea, but just squander the rent money?

In addition to the thematic breakthrough, "Rest in Peace" brings other novelties. Namely, this is our first series created in collusion with trends across the border, primarily with the so-called Scandinavian Noir. Unfortunately, so far we have had the opportunity to see only the Danish series "Forbrydelsenr" (this was the case at the time of writing, later shown "Borgen" and "Bron" were shown), but its impact is very noticeable. For example, in positioning the main character, the stature of a fragile but strong and self-confident girl played by Judita Franković (I am convinced that her refreshing performance and acting from another register has to do with the fact that she did not attend the Academy of Dramatic Arts), very similar to the stubborn and intelligent policewoman Lund. Also, the way in which the parallel actions are intertwined, the treatment of a larger number of episodic characters, as well as the tonality that counts on adult and mature audiences, undoubtedly reveal good role models. Some directing or filming procedures do not hide that they were borrowed from "Forbrydelsen", for example, the use of music and an accentuated montage sequence, and in creating the atmosphere is a special contribution of director of photography Mario Sablić who, instead of the usual three shades of gray for domestic television products, gave the series 50 shades of brown.

Directors Goran Rukavina and Kristijan Milić should be acknowledged for their clear and dynamic plotting, the choice of locations is also excellent, but if something is a real sensation, then it is the acting achievements. And I do not mean the already mentioned Judita Franković, nor Miodrag Krivokapić, an actor superstar from whom, after all, we do not expect anything other than a top performance, but acting as a whole. Namely, for ten years now, drama production has been dominated by soap operas, so today we see actors and actresses who grew up in them and almost can't act differently than they learned there, which means that a good actor is the one who manages to pronounce all written sentences in less than three takes. This soap opera tone has completely taken over television, and it is increasingly penetrating the film, so the fact that "Rest in Peace" looks and sounds like a good film and not like a bad telenovela is a real success. You probably know that feeling when you're ashamed of yourself on the couch for someone's awful acting on the screen, and that's really not the case in this series.

Recently, Belgrade's Danas chose "Where the Wild Boars Go" produced by the then Television Zagreb as the best ex-Yu series of all time, but what would happen if the same question referred to the period from 1990? In our country, the only more ambitious series in the 90s was awful "Stormy Silences", a decade later the outrageously expensive and pathetic Vrdoljak's "Long Dark Night", Hrvoje Hribar with "New Age" didn't exactly "nailed it", so only soap operas and sitcoms with humor only slightly upgraded in relation to "Someone Asked About Me?" came to life.

Thus, "Rest in Peace" without real competition took the title of the best Croatian drama series since 1990.

source >