What’s best about a movie triumphing at a festival is it gives its crew some room to breathe. Every award is a token for a little bit more freedom, giving space for experiments and for expanding the world of film. The beginning of “Triumph” creates this exact feeling, with the slow, long shot that starts from far away, as if to declare that directors Grozeva and Valchanov have made a name for themselves and thus earned the right to take the road of the more personal and creative filmmaking.

Whereas “The Lesson” (2014) and “Glory” (2016) stood closer to media sensations and allowed for little creativity in the script, “Triumph” gives a central role to the media blackout. The mystery around the secret operation of seeking aliens in the village of Tsaritchina sets the film’s entire mood and explains its outright sluggish pacing. We don’t see a frantic search for a culmination but rather the opposite: anxiety that a premise that’s too exciting would inevitably lead to an anticlimax. This does sound riskier, but it opens new, unsuspected doors before the directing duo. Are we in for a shocking turn in narration? Or a deeper exploration into the seemingly interesting characters? Or an escape in the direction of cinéma pur?

This context makes it easy for us to imagine the disappointment by the fact that the directors choose the familiar trope instead: a satire for post-communist Bulgaria. Let us outline the plot of “Triumph”: in 1990, the General Staff of the Bulgarian Army orders a secret team to excavate the tomb of the first intersex (!) creature that’s ever lived on Earth. This (real) workpiece is so ridiculous that if we fully embrace its absurdity, we could create an impossibly outrageous film, which, however, would be completely adequate to its fundament. Such a movie would also have the excellent excuse to use the events in Tsaritchina in any way it sees fit, as cinema has the same function as any mystery: to give meaning to a world that’s too confusing. Every well-made movie is, in its own way, a search for the first intersex creature amidst a deteriorating country…

If the issues of “Triumph” had to be described in one sentence, it would be this: the movie’s characters are the usual suspects from the duo’s previous motion pictures, “The Lesson” and “Glory,” but the plot requires something more to fulfil its potential. Margita Gosheva plays yet another seemingly strong character—Pirina, who’s too wound up in dangerous moral dilemmas; Ivan Barnev jumps from skit to skit; and Ivan Savov stays true to his old-fashioned manner that entertains from the very first swear word. But why do these characters, as well as the ones lined up around them like soldiers, paradoxically reminding us of the legion in Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail,” repeat odd and funny words like “reflectorin” or sweat over the “Seventh Zone?” Why don’t they ever question this whole ordeal that looks outright crazy? They’re not complete morons, so they’re not acting simply out of conformity. Nor could their behaviour be interpreted as an allegory of the strange atmosphere of the story. On the contrary, the spectator is helpfully drenched in context (news from the outside world is broadcast on the radio). The influx of information serves to open the hermetically sealed environment of the “supernatural” field when we least want it. The detachment’s morning greeting, “Every day’s a triumph,” vaguely reminds us of a sort of new-age cult, but these people are definitely not a part of a cult, so it doesn’t seem natural.

The big exception from the described is Maria Bakalova, who works with the directing team for the first time here. Her attention to detail playing the part of Slava—a manipulated and immature child—is the movie’s biggest merit. Her act, however, is buried beneath bad director decisions of clumsy movements and creepy, unnatural presence. All characters are bound to the same purpose and crash and burn into awkward humour. The complicated relationship between Slava and Pirina is perhaps the most curious direction that “Triumph” could have explored. Their relationship is indicative of women’s friendship in general and shows what feminism in Bulgaria used to look like in the early 90s—a mix of mutual attraction, envy, and exploitation. This motif, however, is merely outlined, while the complex emotions are left to gurgle—Slava isn’t singled out like the real alien that she is but is instead used—both dramaturgically and literally—so that things can finally come to an end.

Cinematographer Krum Rodriguez has opted for a myriad of poetic frames, and this aesthetic clashes with the movie’s satirical flavour. Laughter can’t pierce through meditation when a dramatic shot is taking place. The directors’ cinematic language becomes increasingly complicated, yet the story is built extremely superficially. Remember that first shot that we mentioned in the beginning? It turns out to be the most impressive in the entire movie.

It’s difficult to choose a direction when every theory seems plausible. Some say that the mission in Tsaritchina had a goal to discover the treasure of Samuel, tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire. Others are content with the more cynical explanation that nuclear warheads from the time of the Warsaw Pact have been buried close to the village, and the rumour about aliens was supposed to distract from the military actions there. All this just goes to show that real stories are more layered than made-up ones, but when stories are less about facts and more about rumours, they’re an even better breeding ground for the vicious nature of cinema.

Материалът е изготвен
с финансовата подкрепа
на Националния фонд „Култура”.