Florence Foster Jenkins comes to Sarajevo.
And now the puzzle of today’s title(s) becomes even clearer.
When we arrived at each hotel on our stay, Damir would point out a bulletin board where he’d post the schedule for the next day’s activities. In Sarajevo, this procedure took a distinct twist. When we returned to our rooms before dinner after our first full day, we found a long note informing us that our first full day in the city coincided with the opening night of the Sarajevo Film Festival – a fact I’d celebrated with Art at a spot just outside our hotel.
In part, the note warned us to avoid the main area of the festival because with Robert de Niro in town, it was likely to be hugely crowded. At another point, the note read,
As we have a special honour to be in Sarajevo during the Film Festival, I would like to invite you for the screening of the movie Florence Foster Jenkins with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. The movie will be played in the Open Air cinema…
I believe that this can be a really wonderful experience for our last evening in Sarajevo…I managed to buy the tickets for all of us this afternoon. This is my treat to all of you.
Not everyone accepted Damir’s generous offer but I was all in from the start. Some folks declined because of the falling temperature. Some wanted some time away from the group and others simply needed to unwind in their own way after an intense day. The film was scheduled to start at 21:00 and when we arrived at 20:30 after a brief four block walk from the hotel, we joined a long queue waiting to enter. Before he ran off to return the unused tickets, Damir tasked us with learning three new Bosnian words or phrases so, when a woman appeared to jump the line, we started to chat with her and the other young woman she’d joined.
In my memory, I see Geanie, Judy, Marie, and Trina with me but don’t recall anyone else. Nor do I remember all the words we tried to master. However, the women decided they wanted to learn the phrase “sexy guide” so they could try to raise a bit of red on Damir’s cheeks. Although I think they told us that seksi vodič would work, the women settled on zgodan vodič which translates as handsome guide.
We settled into our seats
and waited. The program seemed to be running on Montenegrin time (e.g. late). That’s Damir in the blue jacket.
Before the movie started, the festival presented the film’s director Stephen Frears, whose other credits include The Queen, Philomena, and Mrs. Henderson Presents (a favorite of mine),
with the Heart of Sarajevo Award. In his acceptance, Frears shot a few choice barbs at Donald Trump – focusing particularly on his nativism and views about migrants – and many in the crowd reacted with boisterous cheers. (Whatever you might think of them, the Clintons are viewed very fondly in B&H because, although the West was late in reacting, they credit Bill Clinton with orchestrating NATO’s intervention and forging the Dayton accord.)
Based on a true story, the film itself, about a wealthy socialite who was once described as having only the talent to make great music sound spectacularly awful, avoids the pitfalls of turning to farce. Richly comic in places with nuanced performances by stars Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant and supporting cast Simon Helberg and Nina Arianda, the picture creates empathy for all the characters.
It was a perfect way to end the day. Walking back to the hotel, we passed the Cathedral Church of the Nativity of Theotokos. I couldn’t resist photographing the dramatically lit edifice.
But this is Sarajevo, after all.
We’ll leave Sarajevo in the morning on our way to the village of Karanac in northeastern Croatia not far from either Serbia or Hungary. There, our program features what OAT calls “A Day in the Life” – an adventure that promises to expose us to traditional Balkan ways and where we will have a second home hosted dinner.
I’ve tried to stress that I see Sarajevo as a city of contrasts and my stay there, although brief, left memories that will not merely linger but will impact my world view for a long time to come. I hope my words have conveyed some of this sense to you.
Perhaps you remember this photo by Mikhail Evstafiev
that I said may have inspired Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo. As we leave this city of contrasts, I will leave you with the brilliant opening paragraphs of that book:.
It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.
In 1945 an Italian musicologist found four bars of a sonata’s bass line in the remnants of the firebombed Dresden Music Library. He believed these notes were the work of the seventeenth-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni, and spent the next twelve years reconstructing a larger piece from the charred fragment. The resulting composition, known as Albinoni’s Adagio, bears little resemblance to most of Albinoni’s work and is considered fraudulent by most music scholars. But even those who doubt its authenticity have difficulty denying the Adagio’s beauty.
Nearly half a century later, it’s this contradiction that appeals to the cellist. That something could be almost erased from existence in the landscape of a ruined city, and then rebuilt until it is new and worthwhile, gives him hope. A hope that, now, is one of a limited number of things remaining for the besieged citizens of Sarajevo and that, for many, dwindles each day.
Twenty years after the end of the siege, in a rebuilding city, both hope and Sarajevo survive.