Oscars 2015: "Kauboji (Cowboys)"

"Cowboys"

There are movies that you fall instantly in love with after just a few minutes of watching it. Last week, I saw Croatia's entry to the Oscars this year, "Kauboji" ("Cowboys"), during a screening sponsored by the European Film Promotion and I loved it instantly!

It’s a funny and endearing film set in an industrial town in Croatia. It tells the story of Sasa Anlokovic and his troupe of wannabe actors as they try to mount a stage play in a town that has not seen one in over a decade.

Sasa is a successful theatre director who was lured back to his hometown to help revitalize the town’s arts and culture scene. And everything would have been perfect if only there were more actors who showed up during the audition process.

By some curious incident, only a handful of people showed interest in the production that Sasa was mounting and he was left with no choice but to take every single of one of them in as his actors. This group of wannabe actors is composed of a down-on-his-luck deodorant salesman, an unsmiling ex-convict, a confused young man, a handsome easy-go-lucky man, a woman and her mentally-challenged brother who speaks a dialect nobody could understand and one real actor whose dreams of headlining his own show is matched only by his pushy mother’s overbearing expectation of her son’s stardom.

"Cowboys" is a loving tribute to all the actors and directors who all struggle to realize their dream projects. For the director, the challenge was to mount a play because he needed to satisfy his commitment to his art. For the actors, they needed to ultimately prove to themselves that they could do and create something if they only set their hearts into it.

It is such a joy when the characters discover that even though they may not have the biggest talent for acting, each one sure has a talent suited for some specific part in the play. If we go deeper and examine the allegorical implication of this we can actually conclude that everyone is an actor just waiting for the right part to come along. That we all possess some form of creative talent that can be tapped anytime with just the right motivation.

The film’s biggest strength lies beyond the obvious comedy or the talented ensemble of actors whose performances I really enjoyed, and, although it may not be too apparent to casual moviegoers, there’s a powerful element in the film’s final act that highlights the lasting power of art: that no matter how dire things get, art, when it has taken form, will endure and continue to live on in the new set of talents it has taken roots in.

Why the movie is titled “Cowboys” is something that has been revealed in the press notes for the film but I would rather be vague about it and let the audience discover for themselves the reason behind the title because the scene that sets up the title – and the course of the story, for that matter, is a funny, if not poignant, homage to one of the universally-loved genre in movies.

I also wish to point out that director Tomislav Mrsic’s use of iconic songs from a different era and his decision to play them in their entirety to score key scenes is one of the main reasons why I so loved his film. I loved the nostalgia it evoked and how it made the film somewhat timeless.

Rating: 4 ½ Stars