Goodbye, How Are You?

“The best government is the one that has yet to come, provided it never comes,” according to an old Serbian saying, one of many featured in this entertaining, intellectually engaging essay-film about how citizens use language to critique – and resist – the politics, governments, and utter madness that surrounds them. Filmmaker Boris Mitić gathers the best political aphorisms from Serbian and Yugoslavian life (which features no shortage of war and insanity), with “their killer dose of black humour, satire and merciless sarcasm.” As one citizen says, “The longer the war, the closer the peace.” Another counters, “We are all in the same mess, but we arrived first.” The film’s unseen “host,” a jaded descendent of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, narrates Mitić’s astonishing visuals, drawn from old newsreels and a personal road trip through modern-day Serbia. Continuing the essay-film tradition of Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, and Jean-Luc Godard, Goodbye is a primer on Balkan resistance and history yet universal in its homage to language and subversion. —MEIFF