THE TRAP
Directed by Srdan Golubovic
Produced by Jelena Mitrovic, Natasa Ninkovic, Alexander Ris, Jörg Rothe & Laszlo Kantor
Written by Melina Pota Koljevic & Srdan Koljevic
Released by Film Movement
Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles
Serbia/Germany/Hungary. 106 min. Not Rated
With Nebojsa Glogovac, Natasa Ninkovic, Anica Dobra, Miki Manojlovic & Marko Durovic
 

Would you kill a stranger to save your son? According to The Trap, if your son were a beautiful, blonde angel and you were a father otherwise powerless to help, yeah, you probably would. A sort of Serbian Crime and Punishment where the protagonist isn’t a moral aberration but a kind, well-socialized man pushed to the brink, The Trap is a film noir bursting with psychological and philosophical implications.

This universal moral parable is set in contemporary Belgrade in the midst of social and economic flux, where poverty coexists with the sudden windfall of privatization. When Mladen (Nebojsa Glogovac)—a man of meager means—discovers that his son’s life depends on a $30,000 operation (not covered by insurance), he and his wife place an ad in the paper asking for help. The only response comes from a man who promises Mladen every last dime if he kills a troublesome business rival.

Since the story is told through Mladen’s woeful confession, I feel comfortable revealing that the tortured man finds himself taking the offer. Though heavy with irony and twists, and a good helping of edge-of-your-seat scenarios, the film isn’t defined by surprises. Rather, it boils down to a dialogue between Mladen and his demons—his inner fight to overcome the seeming inevitability of the murder and then the guilt.

Quiet in his struggle, Mladen’s emotions remain on low simmer, almost indiscernible, until they boil over toward the very end as everything falls apart around him. While the restraint is an honest interpretation of a human reaction to grief, which often looks more like stupor than hysteria, the understated acting dehumanizes the character and reduces him to a vehicle for the film’s ideas, reminiscent of protagonists from existential texts. But unlike Meursault in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, for example, Mladen feels every moral pang of what he’s done.

Motivated entirely by love for his son, the “choice” to kill is akin to the choice to keep falling when thrown off a cliff. It is the offer that throws him off, and his subsequent actions are the uncontrollable decent. Despite the weight of its ideas, The Trap is entirely accessible. With frequent silence highlighting the rich camera work and even richer acting, the execution of this intelligent thriller elevates it beyond philosophy to powerful entertainment. Yana Litovsky
January 13, 2009