“Succeeds in making a subtle but meaningful statement on the complicated process of returning home.”

When one thinks of home, the immediate image that comes to mind does tend to vary – for some, it’s a physical place in which they found comfort and security, whether in the past or the present. For others it’s a more fluid, flexible space defined less by the physical location and more by the people who occupied it. It can also be a challenging experience, especially when reflecting on the range of emotions that are associated with the act of homecoming. We find that this is the core of How Come It’s All Green Out Here? (Kako je ovde tako zeleno?), in which director Nikola Ležaić tells a clearly autobiographical story about his own return home after he is informed that his family has the opportunity to exhume their late grandmother’s body, transporting it to her home in the remote region of Croatia where she spent most of her life, and where she wished to be buried. While the journey begins with the usual pleasantries and recollections, the collective pain felt by this family begins to emerge as each one of them deals with their personal traumas and unresolved conflicts, realising that returning home is not always the easiest experience. A quiet, sentimental drama that allows the director to explore his own existential quandaries as well as processing the grief that he has held onto for years, the film is a relatively straightforward affair, but one that does have many merits, particularly in how it openly addresses themes such as the unbearable burden of collective grief and how challenging it can be to find the way forward when weighed down by the past.

While some filmmakers may believe that being coy about their intentions is more fashionable when drawing inspiration from their own lives, Ležaić wastes no time in establishing the film as a visual memoir of a very particular moment in his life. We are introduced to the protagonist, who bears the director’s name and also works in the film industry (although it is set during a period when Ležaić was working in advertising, his aspirations of entering film being a distant dream). We follow him as he journeys with his family, transporting the body of their grandmother from urban Zagreb to rural Dalmatia, the lengthy trip revealing much more about each one than they anticipated at the start. In the process of unpacking these dynamics, we see the film touching on many of the expected themes – not only is homecoming central to the narrative, but familial dynamics, collective trauma and the difficulties that come when confronting the past are frequently explored, which creates a deeply resonant depiction of a group of people bonded by blood but divided by distance, coming together to achieve a shared goal but failing to account for the tough emotions that rise to the surface along the way. Ležaić uses this film to reflect on his own search for identity, filtered through the relationship he has with various members of his family, all of whom are well-defined, complex individuals whose personal challenges become the core of the narrative.

Based on the themes of the film, we can anticipate that Ležaić would be handling many intense emotions when crafting How Come It’s All Green Out Here?, which does utilise some familiar techniques. There are dense moments in which he cannot avoid sentimentality, but the majority of the film is shrouded in a meditative, pensive tone – the quieter moments are more beautiful and haunting than those which are forceful, the latter existing more to push the narrative along rather than defining the film as a whole. It’s a very simple affair, since it establishes a clear goal in terms of a specific destination, and moves swiftly between the different points (both physically and in terms of the narrative), but where the brief deviations prove to contain much more meaning than we would expect. The director has the added challenge of taking a story so personal and intimate, and translating it to the screen in such a way that we are aware that this is his story but not alienated by the specificity of detail with which he is working. He achieves this by finding common ground between his own experiences, those of his family and the audience at large – his personal observations intermingle with some universal ideas, woven together to create a film that will likely resonate with anyone who has struggled to find their place in the world, and who is continuously seeking meaning in their surroundings, not realising that this sense of belonging ultimately comes from within.

While it is a relatively solid and reliable effort, it’s difficult to deny that How Come It’s All Green Out Here? does occasionally come across as a checklist of several familiar themes related to stories of family and homecoming. However, it is in this simplicity that we find the film leaving an impression, even if only as a decently crafted autobiographical account in which the director is able to process his own unresolved issues, attempting to use art to find answers to some excruciatingly difficult questions. Whether or not he succeeds on a personal level is not clear, but from the audience’s perspective, he does provide a strong, meaningful glimpse into themes that may be very personal to him, but to which many viewers will undoubtedly be able to relate in one way or another. It’s quite subtle, and it resists becoming too heavy-handed, an admirable achievement considering how much of the story revolves around themes that would be hopelessly overwrought in the hands of a director without the willingness to challenge specific topics and how they’re rendered on screen, which he does through an elegant, pensive drama that is both bittersweet and thought-provoking in how it tackles some difficult ideas. The film takes its time to reach its terminal destination (and the slow, deliberate pace may seem overly meandering in a few places), while being steadfast in its desire to peer beneath the surface of this family and their ever-shifting dynamics. It is constantly exploring how each of these characters addresses the past in their own way, ruminating on both the past and present in an attempt to understand their individual journeys, and succeeds in making a subtle but meaningful statement on the complicated process of returning home.