Goran is a Croatian drama about man who just wants to drive his taxi and take care of his wife, but people close to him have their own agendas and dreams which threaten his carefree existence.
In the snows of a blizzard, not all is clear, a point made ironically so in director Nevio Marasovic‘s moody Goran, a dark personal journey of unrest that is as unsettling as it is quite moving. It’s a tragedy at heart, an eminent collapse spun from a web of tiny cracks that pilots a fragile man into a chasm of horrors, making it a slow, eventually terrifying trauma that buries you into its darkness much like the snows it seems always trying to escape from.
In the high winter hills of Delnice, Croatia, that snow falls with an almost weighted sense of purpose. It distorts our vision. Driving through it is Goran (Franjo Dijak), a quiet taxi driver with what would seem a life of banality. He and his friend Slavko (Goran Boddan) are building a small sauna for the cabin up in the woods. He his married to Lina (Natasa Janjic), and wants nothing more than to simply be that, a friend and husband. She has a brother Niko (Janko Popovic Volaric), who is gay, barely concealing his relationship with Dragan (Filip Krizan), a young architect, to his almost crusty traditional father (Milan Strljic). But things are slightly askew, a simmering sense of imbalance that has Goran seeing and believing something is not right, and deservedly so. There is betrayal souring the air and it’s not long before secrets and lies lead to terrible violence.
There’s a knee-jerk reaction is to compare the aesthetics and jarring dark comedic violence of Marasovic’s film with the Coen Brothers‘ critical masterpiece Fargo, and perhaps deservedly so. These are richly defined characters who are not quite so eccentric as those in that film, but nonetheless impactful. Where Goran widely delineates from comparison is its pacing, where nearly the entire experience is purposefully understated, its action greatly limited to mostly extended conversations that seep like warm molasses into revealing the secrets at play, of which I won’t reveal a single one. Suffice to say that truths are hard to bear and when Goran thinks he knows one thing, he learns it’s only the first layer smothering something much more foul.
Marasovic is playing with metaphors here, especially with Lina, who we understand is blind but not powerless. She represents much about what drives Goran and as such, remains almost blissfully unaware of the turmoil swirling in all directions around her. While narratively this creates a few sticking points, as fable, it’s truly something else. And that’s the point really, the sort of dreamy morality tale Marasovic and screenwriter Gjermund Gisvold are after, weaving a sickly sweet story of unconditional love around cruelty and despair.
Goran won’t be for everyone, the exceedingly slow trudge to its finale one that most won’t have patience for, which is understandable. We are primed for fast action and even faster cuts, so a film like this is surely going to test one’s resolve. However, Marasovic creates such a harrowingly authentic nightmare amid his semi-lucid landscape, it’s really something well worth giving a try. Beautifully photographed and very well acted, this is a dark and daring gem.
Goran releases on VOD May 4 and DVD August 7