“The harshness of the landscape is matched by the formal rigor of Jušić’s hand.”
High in the windswept mountains of Croatia, a lone figure wanders into a valley. Dressed all in black, with nothing to her name except her clothes and a small Bible, she stumbles into Milena (Ana Marija Veselčić). The woman says her name is Teresa (Manuela Martelli), and she is the Chilean widow of Milena’s brother Marko. Since neither speaks the other’s language, they communicate through gestures and the illustrations in Teresa’s Bible, as well as Milena’s family quilt with portraits of her brothers, until Milena understands that her older brother is dead. She is alone in the valley, as the rest of her small herding community have gone to the mountains, where the sheep can still graze. Teresa asks to be taken to them, so they can bury the few remaining bones of Marko, who she claims was murdered. When younger brother Nikola (Mauro Ercegović Gracin) comes down, it quickly becomes clear to Teresa that Milena is the black sheep of the family.
She convinces Nikola to take her back up the mountain, with Milena in tow. When she is introduced to the rest of the community it changes the group dynamic, with some not trusting her; however, the community’s leader Ilija (Filip Đurić), who shares Teresa’s love of God, opens his heart to his new sister-in-law. Teresa’s willingness to work hard gains her acceptance, including from Ilija’s wife Đuka (Tina Orlandini), yet the cracks widen. As she grows closer to Ilija, she confesses why guilt is weighing so heavily on her heart.
In her sophomore film God Will Not Help, following her widely successful debut Quit Staring at My Plate, Croatian director Hana Jušić plays with the age-old theme of the outsider through a very original lens. The language barrier between Teresa and her new family is vast, and unlikely to be overcome as easily as the film suggests. Yet a deeper and more spiritual connection makes words almost unnecessary when connecting to Milena – who finally meets a soul who doesn’t lambast her and immediately bonds with this strange, strong woman – and to Ilija, a man with godly ambitions with whom she shares a deeply felt faith. Teresa’s strong sense of guilt, for which the true reason long remains a mystery, is what drives her to tie herself down with this family and work hard to earn her place. It feels like making up for something, but what?
The vast mountain landscape that towers over all is beautifully captured by cinematographer Jana Plećaš, and reminds one of the role the mountains play in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life. Her strongest work though comes when the mountains cannot be seen, in the dark nights when only a torch provides a source of light, with darkness enveloping the characters even more than the mountains.
The darkness also conjures up God Will Not Help‘s weakest moments, as Teresa’s guilt visualizes itself in the form of her dead husband Marko (Bogdan Farcas), naked and covered in soot. The film doesn’t need these moments of magical realism, which later expand as Teresa tells her true story; they diminish the spiritual, unspoken bonds between Teresa, Milena, and Ilija that carry the film. Jušić seems to want to soften the twist that Teresa gives the story, but telegraphs what is to come too much. Likewise, the crude biblical imagery that acts as connective tissue is a bit heavy-handed, no matter how beautiful the images themselves are.
Despite these criticisms, God Will Not Help is a strong film by a distinct directorial voice. The harshness of the landscape is matched by the formal rigor of Jušić’s hand, and while the film requires as much hard work as Teresa is subjected to, this bleak tale of guilt and otherness, and of sisterhood being an anchor, reveals great talent and makes God Will Not Help a worthy follow-up to Jušić’s debut. A film with few shortcomings, its berth in Locarno’s main competition is proof that that talent is being recognized.