Reflections (1987)

To me, this movie is perfection.

One of my all time favorites.

Fantastic!

A Major Disappointment

considering rest of markovic's work, this movie takes low position on list of his movies, for someone else it may be average, but not for goran markovic. as we are used to negative associations for yugoslav communist authority in markovic's movies, same thing is presented in 'vec vidjeno'. movie is about the man who is piano teacher who wasted his exceptional talent, primarily because of his childhood traumas which effected the rest of his life to the point of absolute mental decay. he associates nowadays reality with scenes from his childhood (explanes movie title)and general atmosphere is very melancholic and heavy, but not strong or effective enough and that's the key problem

"Vec vidjeno" is the greatest masterpiece of all times. Goran Markovic is one of the greatest directors. This film features excellent acting of Mustafa Nadarevic and Anica Dobra, charming and touching music, sounding in the film. The music creates this mysterious atmosphere which charming spectators. Crossing of today's events and past events made in a very appropriate way. And it proves the Markovic' skill. Look at the Anica Dobra and her appearance and you will realize that she ideally matches the film character! What about Mustafa Nadarevic? He matches even more! Look at furnishings of past events! How it corresponds to reality! The greatest work of the great director and actors!

Goran Markovic's 1987 "Vec vidjeno" (aka Deja Vu) certainly was an ambitious production; heralded in the local press at the time of its release as "the first real Yugoslav urban psycho-thriller/horror", it left both the critics and the previously Hitchcock/Polanski/DePalma/Carpenter-educated audiences fairly unimpressed and it's easy to see why: the story told by the film - and the way it's told - is not just derivative, it's a half-baked catalogue of genre clichés hastily stitched together in hope they would all work in the end and in the domestic setting. Sadly, they didn't. The acting is fairly wooden thanks to a contrived dialogue (Mustafa Nadarevic, in his first, and very likely last role as a sexually frustrated/Oedipally challenged piano-teacher-come-psychopathic-killer is badly miscast and as such barely watchable; even more so and to the point of embarrassment is Anica Dobra - as ever in dire need of more acting/elocution lessons - as the leggy blonde-object-of-his-attention/attraction). Always reliable character actors such as Olivera Markovic and Bogdan Diklic are left with little or nothing to do in their supporting roles, and the film haemorages heavily towards its heavy handed, clumsy and sluggish "dramatic" climax, burdened further still by Zoran Simjanovic's microwave-friendly but ultimately putrid music score.The only half-redeeming aspect of the production in this feature is a studious (sometimes conspicuously so) effort to make this a "period piece" - the story is supposed to be happening in the early seventies - by way of costumes, hairdos, set designs and art direction, such attention to detail being relatively rare in Yugoslav cinema of the time, and this is where the film gathers its few good points; further back in the past, the childhood flashback sequences are nicely shot, all steeped in the nostalgic golden-orange sfumato seeping into luxurious rooms of pre-war Belgrade from between the curtains and/or blinds, and so on. Still, the overall impression is the one of directorial ineptness in the face of the demands of the genre, despite obvious fondness of it (Markovic had already flirted with the thriller/horror genre once before, in his 1982 "Variola vera", and to marginally less questionable effect). "Vec vidjeno/Deja Vu" is hardly his best effort, and is today of interest only to local film buffs and unselective Yugoslav movie collectors, such as the author of this comment.

In my opinion, "Vec vidjeno" is the best movie of Goran Markovic (and all of them are great), one of the best Serbian directors.It's done in cognizable Markovic's way. The story is great (it is by Markovic, also), acting of Mustafa Nadarevic is superb, Zoran Smijanovic's music is excellent as everything else in this movie.It is a horror movie, which is not a typical Yugoslav genre, [besides "Davitelj protiv davitelja" (which is more like comedy) and "Leptirica" I can't think of another], but it is done in a way that Hitchcock would envy. If any film deserves the Oscar then this is the one!