The Meeting Point is a Yugoslav film from 1989. The director of this domestic comedy is Goran Marković, and the screenplay was adapted by him together with Dušan Kovačević, based on whose novel the film was made. The music was composed by the famous Zoran Simjanović.
Actor Rade Marković, who is also the father of Goran Marković, plays the role of the main protagonist, Professor Miša, a man who devoted his entire life to finding a Roman tombstone that represents the gateway between the world of the dead and the living. Also there is Rade’s wife and Goran’s mother, Olivera Marković, who plays Angelina, the own sister of the late professor’s wife, who is played by Anica Dobra. By the way, Angelina is secretly in love with the professor, and one of the funnier scenes in this film is certainly when the professor returns from the other world and, while talking with his late wife, reveals his opinion about Angelina, who is horrified.
Bogdan Diklić, who became famous by acting in the film The Marathon Family, plays the role of the professor’s assistant Petar, while Aleksandar Berček plays the professor’s son Ivan. Danilo Bata Stojković was given the role of Simeun, a man who carries many things on his conscience. Among other things, on his conscience is the fact that while the Germans were chasing his brother, he did not want to let him into the house, and thus is indirectly guilty of his murder. Radmila Živković was given the task of playing the role of Lepa, a woman who remarried even though she had promised her husband that she would not do so. The phenomenal Dragan Nikolić shone in the role of Janko, while the role of Mirjana Karanović as Dr. Jelena is also particularly notable.
Among the most beautiful, and at the same time the saddest scenes of this film is the monologue of actor Dragan Nikolić, who is desperate because he cannot find a match or a lighter in order to light a cigarette in the other world. He is also very resentful and disappointed because he cannot escape from the collection center and return to this world.
“I often wondered: Is there life before death? At the cemetery, each of us begins his second life from the beginning: first day, first week, six weeks, six months, first year, second, ten years, twenty… And then, slowly, we begin to die for the second time in memories. That is when our endless and eternal death begins.”, is his famous quote.
And there are also:
- “Excuse me, but who tears off the heads and arms of these statues?”
• “And tell him to give me back my accordion!”
• “Something kept telling me… Hang yourself, Petar, hang yourself…”
• “Medicine, that is surgery. Everything else is a lottery.”
• “To people your age I used to take off my hat and kiss their hand.”
• “That is a spaceship. It must be Russian. Only the Russians have such technology.”
• “Hit me, hit me, I’ll hit your granny.”
