Blueberry Hill

Aleksandur Morfov

Bulgaria

Bulgarian, English subtitles

I have seen many of Morfov's plays and he has always struck me as one of the most talented Bulgarian stage directors. When I heard that he had made a film, I thought that maybe we shall finally see a post-1989 Bulgarian film that is worth sitting through. Unfortunately, Morfov failed to achieve the transition that Bergman effected with such success. The resulting movie (shot on video) is subpar in just about every respect one can think of.

The thin plot is about a German whose flight to Istanbul is forced to land in Sofia because of bad weather. He has to complete the journey by train during the snowy eve of the new millenium (it was unclear whether this referred to the 1999 celebration or the real millenium). His train ride is relatively uneventful until a bearded shabby-looking tramp steals his coat and pulls the emergency break to get off. When Frank (the German guy) runs after him, he falls out of the train and tumbles down a hill, unnoticed by anyone. The train continues and he is left stranded in a foreing country with zero knowledge of the language.

What follows is an hour and a half of mostly pointless bizarre encounters with "colorful" local characters, designed to show the despair, depravity, and filth of post-Communist existence. Of course, this is not meant to be an nostalgic look at the better past, but a penetrating social critique of modern Bulgarian society. It fails on all counts even before Morfov opted out with the ending (which, by the way, completely negated the entire film for it was impossible for the German, who knew nothing of the country, to dream up all the stuff that he did).

Frank's first encounter is with a bunch of implausibly situated characters who save him, and with whom he spends the New Year celebrations. These guys live in a house right on the train's tracks and have to open both sides of it for the train passes through. At this point I thought that I will be treated to a nice allegory, maybe something Gogol would write. The place has no phone, so Frank has to get to the nearest village (about 20-25 km away). He goes there and finds himself at a wedding, where a rather drunk and obnoxious cretin tries to pick a fight with him for refusing to drink. He (the cretin) and his friends are thrown out of the party, while Frank is almost seduced by a very pretty girl. (All the women in this film were good-looking, a plus.)

Then the wierdness begins as the cretin returns with a bulldozer and attempt to run Frank over. He fails and some travelling musicians pick up the stranded German the next day. When they mistakenly take him for an American, the lead singer offers herself just for the chance to leave the country. This, by the way, was the only solid performance in the film. Her boyfriend, or at least casual boyfriend, gets pissed and knocks Frank out. All this without the latter even saying a word! When he gets to his senses, the band has stopped at a pub and Frank steals their van only to fall asleep while driving and crash into a shallow ditch. A wood fairy (who speaks English) saves him, and then leaves. He wakes up in the train.

There is a mildly related second story in the film that has to do with the train, the conductors, and the machinist, who mostly get drunk and act atrociously. This part can be removed from the film altogether.

Thus, Morfov's Blueberry Hill ends up an enormous disappointment. Shot on video, with horrible cinematography, it has the look and feel of a theater play. In fact, the actors overact quite a bit, just as they would on stage. This approach, however, does not work on film and everything is reduced to a rather humorless parody of a genre. As usual with Bulgarian films, the soundtrack is beyond words. The music (non-original, as usual) is sparse and inappropriate, and the sound is worse than a 50s recording. With the sole exception of the band singer, everyone acted badly, which is surprising considering that the film has some of the most talented actors. Maybe the theatrical approach ruined it all? Maybe not. The script was weak too.

I have been quite nostalgic recently and look forward to going back to Bulgaria. After the film, my wife simply remarked that she had no desire to visit the country again. This, of course, is too much. In my years there I have never encountered any of the crap that this movie heaped on the poor German. In fact, I doubt very much that anything like this would ever happen, especailly considering that country folk are usually friendlier than Sofians. (I should know, I am one of the unfriendly latter ones.) I can also see why critics were peeved about the film and especially about the director's desire to see it exported. As an image of the country, this is untruthful. As cinema, it is plain bad.

April 20, 2002