Happy Kid (Sretno Dijete) is one man's recollection of the music of his Yugoslavian youth and how the bands of his homeland came to lead the masses with their new-wave beats.
Director Igor Mirkovic, a former TV newsman, went out to find those musicians whose records he played incessantly and took up the television screens with their gyrating frontmen. There we see bloated, balding middle-aged men who lament about their days in the Yugoslavian music scene, and comment about how their bands introduced the country's café-crowding youth with the fresh styles of punk and new wave.
Happy Kid, though slightly funny at times, also gives light to Yugoslavia's economic troubles of the early '80s and the changing face of the country following communist leader Marshal Tito's death.
Possibly the most memorable scenes in Happy Kid are of the bands - Elektricni Orgazam, Azra, and Buldozer, among others - in their early '80s glory, complete with ties, sunglasses and black-and-white-checkered backgrounds for their music videos.
Throughout the film, we see a finger-drumming Mirkovic search for those bands that shaped his youth. In an emotional scene, the middle-aged Mirkovic's face glows at a concert, while one of his favorite bands urges the teenage crowd to forget their troubles and live in a world of dance.
Happy Kid, overall, is an enthrallingly nostalgic, often humorous documentary; however, the film neglects to show fully the country's political situation and the reactions of the young people who listened to that groundbreaking music the film focuses on. And though showing a clip of a news report covering the controversy of punk graffiti in Yugoslavia's cities, the film would have fared better to highlight the older generation's reaction to that
noisy sound emitting from teenagers' record players.
17 Archives
Nicole Banatka
