By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
And they say that Montenegrins are lazy…
Would lazy people patiently dig a tunnel from the apartment to the basement of the High Court for weeks and months? After all, many Montenegrin emigrants in America worked hard and diligently in the mines. As evidenced by Janko Djonovic’s song – African Americans and Montenegrins. Which says:
And at the mouths of underground pits
the early east sun is a sunset for them.
And for the whole day
rumble their pickaxes,
rumble and darn
under the world.
The heroes of the story about the tunnel leading to the High Court depot are, admittedly, more like the Dalton brothers than Djonovic’s miners.
The whole story with the Podgorica tunnel is irresistibly reminiscent of Hollywood films and series from online platforms. Now, when the prime minister with his entourage and cameras has trodden the scene of the crime, which means that there is no more work for forensics there, it is possible that the solution to the mystery should be sought – precisely in the movies.
We present several film productions whose plot is unusually reminiscent of the events in the basement of the High Court.
To begin with, a literary and film classic:
“The Count of Monte Cristo” (1975, directed by David Green)
The novel by Alexandre Dumas, which was made into a film with Richard Chamberlain in the title role, is the story of Dantes, a virtuous French army officer who is unjustly accused and thrown into a dungeon on the island of If. In prison, Dantes meets the priest Faria, who dug an escape tunnel. That tunnel, however, instead of freedom, led only to Dantes’ cell.
In the Podgorica version, the story should be called “Count Montenegro”. If the investigation was conducted based on Dumas’ story, two possibilities should be checked. First: did a priest take part in the digging of the tunnel? And second: was the tunnel really supposed to lead to the High Court? What if the diggers, like priest Faria, dug crookedly and reached the higher court instead of, say, the Central Bank or the Parliament?
This, of course, reminds us of the episode of Bugs Bunny in which he, having taken a wrong turn near Albuquerque, reaches the Snowman by mistake.
“The Shawshank Redemption” (1994, directed by Frank Darabont)
Like Dumas’ novel, Darabont’s film based on Stephen King’s novel is about an innocent prisoner named Andy (played by Tim Robbins). He digs a tunnel as well. And, as in the case of the Podgorica tunnel diggers, no one heard him during all the years of digging. How is it possible?
Film criticism has no answer. It is widely believed that this is a hole in the script. There are many kinds of things that you don’t hear. There are those you don’t hear. And there are those you do not want to hear – and precisely those are the most silent. Be that as it may, when there is a huge hole in the middle of the city leading to the High Court, the least of the problems is the hole in the story.
“The Great Escape” (1963, directed by John Sturgis)
Big Hollywood stars including Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson star in this film about the escape of Allied prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp. The film provides a detailed account of the digging of the escape tunnel. There is, however, an obvious difference between the story of the Podgorica tunnel and all the listed film stories. In the film, people dig a tunnel from prison to freedom. In Podgorica, it was dug from freedom to prison. A malicious man would say that in liberated Montenegro there is no difference between “freedom” and prison. An even more evil man would say that in unhappy countries people are fleeing those countries. And only in the most unfortunate ones do they run underground.
“Citizen with Dangerous Intentions” (2009, directed by Gary Gray)
This hit film with Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx in the title roles has the most similarities with the story of the Podgorica tunnel.
Butler plays a vigilante who, after justice fails to punish his family’s killers, takes justice into his own hands. His real target is the judicial system, which he brutally punishes.
In this film, the American judiciary is portrayed as weak and ineffective. But the imagination of the author of the film does not reach the degree of disintegration of the judiciary, which has been achieved in Montenegro.
Butler kills judges, blows up cars, even plans to demolish City Hall. How, when the whole time he is in prison? The trick is that he has dug a tunnel that allows him to sneak out of the prison and back into it.
Butler’s goal is to show how the law doesn’t work. At the end of the film, Jamie Foxx is forced to break the law to stop Butler – forced to take the law into his own hands, like him. In this way, Butler wins, because all distinction between him and the agent of the dysfunctional system disappears.
This brings us to the Podgorica story. Officials’ comical statements about how “almost nothing” of evidence is missing may be hiding the truth.
Because: what if the point of the tunnel was not to steal evidence, but, as in the movie “Citizen with Dangerous Intentions”, the essence was to make fun of the system? Whether evidence lacks or not, the system is exposed and mocked. The system does not work: who is afraid and who believes in the system that the citizens make fun of?
The Montenegrin system literally has a huge hole in it.
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
