Moments of true brilliance litter the muddy landscape of Josip Žuvan’s debut feature, Carbide (Garbura).
Places like the fictional village where Carbide is set will be recognisable to all those that grew up in Croatia whether they grew up in a rural place or visited their grandparents there.
The difference between the urban visitors and our protagonists Nikola and Antonio (excellent newcomers Floigl and Ercegović Gracin) is that these boys are sentenced to that place. They find solace in the nature that surrounds them, each other’s company and; they hope, YouTube fame. It would be idyllic if there wasn’t for the petty feud between their two families. One of those that no one knows what it’s about anymore.
Their families are similar in how they hold their grudge, but they escape their pain in different ways. In Anotonio’s family, the mother is self-absorbed, self-destructive and self-satisfied. She lounges around listening to music on full blast in an attempt to drown out the outside gloom. Antonio’s dad is in Switzerland and he’s about to become a good dad who keeps his promises. It’s just that something came up and he has to disappoint Antonio one last time. In defence or defiance of his circumstance, Antoino wears a perpetual frown and hides behind posturing and peacocking.
His best friend Nikola appears as the softer of the two. His family have a real Christmas tree and a full Christmas dinner. Not to mention a full family too – a mum and a dad. But there is something latent amiss. This manifests in humid spots coming through the walls of the house. The mum sees them everywhere and is eager to fix it while the rest of the household would rather ignore them. She takes matters into her own hands and scrubbs the walls clean but it’s to no avail. The spots just appear on another wall.
What elevates the story of Carbide is that Žuvan doesn’t treat the dialogues as witty screenwriting exercises. He has an intrinsic understanding of what’s boiling beneath the surface of each uttered sentence and behaviour. He follows the boys as they blow up larger and larger cans of carbide for their YouTube channel as well as their sudden confrontation with the complexities and childishness of the adult world. Žuvan understands that the friendship between the two boys is forged not just from their common interests but their common pain. Perhaps because of the pain that their surroundings and their families inflict on them they find compassion for each other.
Carbide sizzles in contact with water and explodes with a spark. Nikola’s mum tries to keep the moisture out, but that proves impossible. When she and Nikola finally move out, Nikola finds that the carbide he used to play with is no longer reactive. His mother has taken the fuse out of the bomb. For those who stayed behind there can be no winners as they are perpetually jerked back into the past.
