“A work that, with its explorations of (national) identity and displacement, is relevant today, even if its form is deliberately archaic.”

In a world where so many people are displaced and searching for their identity, a film like Ivan Salatić’s second feature Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master is both a good reminder that this kind of displacement occurred in all ages, and a reflection on our current times in which many have had to leave their homes to flee war-torn countries. While its solemnity and penchant for stately images might not make it the most accessible film, partly because the characters are little more than archetypes, those who can get on its wavelength and fall for its melancholy will find Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master a perhaps superficial, but accurate and strangely touching meditation on what home means, and how longing for it can drive a person to madness.

The narrative, as little as there is, revolves around Djuko (Luka Petrone) and his titular master Morlak (Marko Pogačar, a popular Croatian poet in his debut performance). The latter, based on the real-life Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, is a 19th-century bishop, poet, and ruler over several tribes in what these days is the Montenegrin mountainside. With the Ottoman Turks encroaching on his lands and his health deteriorating (he suffers from tuberculosis), Morlak and a small part of his household are forced to move to Southern Italy. Although very dutiful, Djuko’s homesickness and his frustration over his master’s unwillingness to go back to their land and fight for it will lead him down a path of despair. When Morlak becomes close with Ljubo (Igor Božanić), a visiting scholar, Djuko begins to unravel and takes drastic measures to allow himself to return to his Montenegrin home.

While this sounds like ample opportunity to infuse the film with dramatic scenes aplenty, Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master drains the story of as much drama as it can. Scenes are presented in a straightforward fashion with very little emotion, like small vignettes, a series of choreographed conversations that are meticulously framed and often gorgeously lit (although some outdoor scenes miss the mark in that regard). This detached approach underlines the more philosophical nature of both the character of Morlak and the film itself. In one scene Djuko asks his master why he wouldn’t let him slay a Turk that accompanied them on their journey across the Adriatic. “Is he one soul when he invades our hills, and another soul when we are crossing the sea with him?” he asks, to which Morlak retorts that one’s feathers change depending on the context. These are the kind of conversations scattered throughout the film, delivered almost sotto voce, hardly building upon the framework of a narrative that is barely there.

‘Superficial’, ‘detached’, ‘archetypical characters’; that doesn’t make the film sound interesting at all. Yet there is something beguiling about Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master, a hypnotic quality that you can’t look away from. The film reminds one at times of Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, another film about displacement (albeit in a different context) and being a fish-out-of-water, or the works of Eugene Greene, in that the emphasis is more on the cerebral than the dramatic. This means the film will have a niche audience, although its historical background should let it play well on home turf (Njegoš is still held in high regard in the region, in particular by Montenegrins and Serbs). A film for admirers of stilted historical drama, Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master is a work that, with its explorations of (national) identity and displacement, is relevant today, even if its form is deliberately archaic.