Review of The Weight of Chains (2010) by Suncica M — 26 Sep 2011

22 year old Canadian-Serbian director Boris Malagurski seems to have overstudied his personal god Michael Moore a bit too closely in the making of Weight of Chains. It mimics every Moore film in editing, sound, technique, direction, and right down to the voice overs. Malagurski even SOUNDS like Moore. Weight of Chains also suffers from Michael Moore's one sided bias.

It's not that Malagurski's documentary on the break up of the former Yugoslavia is lacking in facts, its just shoved down your throat with condescending and smarmy voice overs. It doesn't let the interviews and archival footage speak for itself, because Malagurski won't shut up. (Just like Moore).

Steeped in heavily life-was-better-Yugostalgia and Euroskpticism, Weight of Chains takes the point of view of how the former Yugoslavia dissolved mostly due to EU/NATO/US capitalistic/geopolitical interests.

It claims nationalism and ethnic hatred was drummed up by the west, exaggerated, and used for exploitation so foreign capitalist interests could devour the former republics for its own use. That Yugoslavia is now a colony of the west (which is arguably true).

It focuses mostly on Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Slovenia gets only a passing mention, and Macedonia is totally ignored.

There's a light slap on the wrist to Serbia, with Croatia getting a majority of the blame.

As the villains of the play, we have the US and Germany who are manipulating everything on the sidelines (not that they didn't..).

The history presented is interesting, as is the archival footage. But its the line up of interviews and experts that are SO pro Yugoslavia/Serbia that leads you awry.

That being said all documentaries are biased (except maybe films like Winged Migration), its just this one is so painfully so, you might push it away as propaganda.

The end of the film is full of hypocrisy. He says its a stereotype that there has always been ethnic strife in Yugoslavia, but he has no problem bringing up the Ottoman Turks, The Nazi Croatian Puppet Sate, Cetniks and Utasha, the Jasenovac concentration camps where Serbs, Roma and Jews were exterminated, and Srebrenica which he says "was no worse than any other killings of serbs in villages nearby".

That maybe true, but entering in a pain olympics doesn't make his point of view any stronger.

But lets just say Michael Moore must be one flattered man.