I Even Met Happy Gypsies [Yugoslavia 1967]

Skupljači perja
Director: A. Petrović
Cinematographer: T. Pinter

This film depicts, in a frank, mostly realist, and only slightly romantic way, the life and problems of Roma people living at the margins of Yugoslav society, in Vojvodina, Serbia. It is a piece of serious social criticism which was apparently well-received at the time, and manages to depict a stark situation in which seemingly everyone and no one is to blame, without oversimplifying the causes of the problems or their potential solutions.

One of the overriding themes of the film is the isolation of the Roma community from the rest of the society. This mainly appears to be self-isolation. Toward the beginning of the film, one of the non-Roma characters asks one of the Roma, 'When are you going to join the working class?' to which he responds, 'A crooked gypsy or a crooked worker, what's the difference?' Similarly, a priest who complains about the 'Antichrist' (the Communists) making it difficult for the church to make money any more says that even the gypsies have been made to work. And at the end of the film, we see how the community refuse to co-operate with the police in turning in one of their own, although they know he is guilty of murder. The point being that throughout the film we see that this is a community that prefers to stick to itself, and sees the state and the rest of Yugoslavia as an outsider trying to impose itself.

There is therefore not much in the way of socialism within the community depicted here. Rather, these are people who live in the interstices of the socialist economy, buying and selling and doing odd jobs like street cleaning, prostitution, and collecting goose feathers from goose farmers to sell for pillow making. They trade with others who are also on the margins--small, independent peasants; priests and nuns who support themselves by selling the remnants of church property. Within their community, there seems to be little in the way of external legal enforcement; they settle disputes by violence, community enforcement, and so on. When the law does apply to them, it is again something entirely external, e.g. for traffic violations.

This means that some of their internal social problems are not dealt with in any visible way by society at large. Men beat their wives and other women, and abandon them seemingly at will for other women. Alcoholism and gambling are rife, seemingly necessary components of the image of masculinity. A child even dies because she is sick, with no apparent effort to fetch a doctor or make use of the state medical system, which remains completely unmentioned. And the community appears poor; the odd jobs they do to survive do not seem to provide them with much, particularly when income is spent on gambling and drink.

Of course it is not entirely a question of self-isolation. We also see how wider Yugoslav society sees 'dirty gypsies'. In Belgrade, they work as street performers, street cleaners, prostitutes, etc. Two lorry drivers symbolise the view of the Roma when they pick up a Roma girl who is hitch-hiking and assume that she will have sex with them (not for money); when she refuses one of them, he beats her. At another point, a policeman says 'Gypsies are only good for drinking with and throwing in jail'. The point being, the rest of society also seems to see these people as on the margins, understands them entirely on the basis of stereotypes, and treats them accordingly.

But another point of emphasis which is interesting is that this status of 'gypsy' is not a fixed category. As Petrović says, 'gypsy' implies a low social status, not just an ethnic and cultural group; so, if a 'gypsy' were to become a doctor or whatever, even his or family would no longer think of him as a gypsy. Thus, in this film, Roma people call each other 'dirty gypsy' and say things like 'Don't be such a gypsy', sometimes in jest but usually seriously. In other words, the Roma people themselves are shown as having a very low opinion of themselves and each other, and to fit themselves into the same stereotypes as those assigned by others in Yugoslavia. This lack of self-esteem can of course be seen as a contributory factor to other social problems. But the continual use of the appellation as a pejorative by the Roma themselves seems to reinforce the idea that their social status is partly self-enforced; perhaps wider society might be able to offer them a better and more stable material living standard, but they do not want to take it up.

Why might this be? Maybe because, as Petrović claims, they value their freedom; maybe they simply do not want to give up their way of life; maybe they mistrust the 'outside' world too much to believe in something like socialism. This is suggested by the line toward the beginning to the effect that they would not want to 'join the working class'. It is also suggested by such moments as the key shot in which the protagonist cuts open his own bags of goose feathers and lets them fly out of the lorry in which he is riding; while he loses his income, he does it simply because he sees them 'flying free'. Then, interestingly, he lies to a police officer and says that he was drunk at the time. This seems to be suggestive of a wider metaphor; that there is something about the life of the Roma that they simply do not want to give up, or that is natural to them, and that they use negative stereotypes about themselves to barricade themselves against the outside world.

This something is also hinted at by the film in its more positive depictions of elements of the life of the community. In particular it comes through in the music; the film is full of Roma songs and instrumentation, which are at times quite beautiful. It also comes through in the mundane shots of people's faces and everyday life--a sense that, on top of all of the problems, there is something good about this life. Even in the final sequence, in which the community refuse to inform police about the whereabouts of a murderer, there is a hint that the defiance and close-knit character of the community is itself something they can be, and perhaps are, proud of. One with different ideas about how they should live might wonder whether this is really worth the material sacrifices they make, but this film does not attempt to answer that question. Instead it simply shows us a certain, almost documentary, perspective on the life of some Roma people, and shows us that it exists under outside pressure and with internal psychological contradictions, but hints that there are deeper reasons why it persists.

In its slightly documentary style, and in the portrayal of domestic violence, patriarchy and family relations, it is somewhat reminiscent of Tarr's Family Nest. Its use of Orthodox Christian imagery also slightly recalls Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublyov, but unlike that film, this one clearly mocks religion and portrays its remaining adherents as greedy, hypocritical, and clinging to power and wealth.

The general style of the film is in itself interesting. It makes use of evocative visual juxtapositions without seemingly like jarring montage. For example, two scenes in which a man lies in a pile of feathers: In the first, he counts out on his fingers a list of names he could not read because he is illiterate; the feathers combine with his facial expression to suggest his innocence and simplicity. In the second, he is stabbed to death in the pile of feathers, and an interesting effect is created by the contrast; for we might easily anticipate a flood of red to stain through the white, but instead almost no blood is visible--thus a powerful image is created and even made more powerful by the fact that it is not actually displayed. These feather scenes, including the scene of the feathers flying out across the road, contrast markedly with the greyness of the mud of the village, and suggest a certain higher beauty in the life of people who are seen by others and by themselves as 'dirty'. This is particularly strong because the feathers are a mundane source of income; the real title of this film is 'The Feather Gatherers'.

Thus, the film points subtly to that which is beautiful in that which is 'dirty' and ugly; but that is not its only purpose. For it shows the whole mixed together. It is a piece of social criticism which leaves us with no answers, and one of the reasons for this is that it seems to suggest that this is a community that would not respond easily to any attempt to address its problems, particularly by the outside world. This film tells us some interesting things about Yugoslavia: the way in which the Roma people were allowed to live outside of the project of socialism, a tension between the friendly acceptance of them by Serbs described by Petrović and a kind of prejudice. Its good reception also tells us something: that people were ready for and willing to hear criticism of that prejudice and of the situation itself. Aesthetically speaking it is sophisticated and in the end a moving suggestion about our common humanity; socially it tells us something about one of the 'other sides' of Yugoslav society and East European history in general.