Last year, a "nuclear" film from Yugoslavia premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, attracting the attention of many fans, and the film was also shortlisted for the "Temple of Heaven Award" at the 14th Beijing International Film Festival. Although it failed to win any awards in the competition, it won a good reputation for leading the main competition with a 4.2 house magazine rating, which is "Top Secret Formula" directed by the famous Serbian actor and director Dragan Bijelogric.
Last year, "Oppenheimer" broke the box office record for biographical films with a score of more than 900 million, and its story about Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", has made people focus on keywords such as atomic bombs, nuclear tests, and "Cold War", and the last time the "nuclear" film and television works that caused phenomenal discussions were back in 2019 HBO and Sky Pictures co-produced the series "Chernobyl". The show sparked a ratings frenzy after it aired on HBO, giving many people a more real understanding of that period of history.
As a film that also deals with the consequences of nuclear radiation, Top Secret Formula offers a rare "Yugoslav perspective" that, in the sense, opens up another "Oppenheimer" narrative.
The story is based on a true incident that occurred in 1958 at the nuclear reactor of the Winça Research Institute in Yugoslavia: after a critical accident at one of the research reactors, six workers were exposed to high doses of radiation, one of whom died soon after, and the other five gradually recovered after receiving treatment.
The film presents the whole process of the event and focuses the narrative on the treatment of irradiated Yugoslav physicists by French scientists at the Institut Curie in Paris. The treatment also involved the first successful bone marrow transplant in Europe between unrelated human individuals.
The year 1958 was a time of tension during the Cold War, and fears of nuclear war were growing in both the Eastern and Western camps. A group of young communist scientists led by Professor Dragoslav Popovich at the Wincha Nuclear Research Institute in Yugoslavia are conducting secret nuclear tests with the support of Vice President Leko Ranković.
Unfortunately, during the test they were accidentally exposed to overdoses of uranium radiation. By the time they smell the strong smell of ozone, a lethal radiation hazard has already been created. Professor Pavlay Savage, the founder of the Institut Wencha, sent them to Paris for treatment by virtue of his personal relationship with the Institut Curie.
However, Professor Matt, a French immunologist who was invited to lead the treatment, was opposed to nuclear weapons, which made him hesitate to face Professor Popovich and his party. Especially considering the key question of different camps and different positions, "To save or not to save?" "How can I save it?" This series of difficult choices is in front of Matt.
In terms of creating the atmosphere of the era, "Top Secret Formula" restores the internal and external environment of the institute to the greatest extent. The film begins with the radiation patients landing in Paris at night, and from beginning to end it is dominated by night scenes and interior scenes, and the visual of the whole film is dominated by retro dark yellow tones, with the white coats of medical staff, splashed blood, various sounds from treatment equipment, and shaved hair due to surgical needs...... Creates an atmosphere of oppression and suffocation.
The film combines the portrayal of the main characters with the portrayal of group portraits, and comprehensively shows the complex situation of the two camps under the Iron Curtain. The battle on the operating table was always urgent, and the "confrontation" outside the ward did not stop.
Yugoslav scientists, who were secretly developing nuclear bombs, had to "go deep into enemy camps" to be treated by French medical teams, and the intelligence and security services of both sides worked intensively. Professor Popovich, who has mastered the recipe for the development of a nuclear bomb, on the one hand calms the emotions of his young colleagues and endures the great pain of bone marrow treatment, and on the other hand, he needs to be constantly on guard against the constant probing and prying eyes of various forces of the enemy country.
As he says in the second half of the film, in that conversation with Matt, "this [the notebook he carries with him to record data and recipes] holds my whole life", and in turn, the fate of the entire Yugoslav country.
"Top Secret Formula" reveals the causes and consequences of the Wenqia Institute incident layer by layer through the multiple memory flashbacks of Professor Popovich, who carries the "secret recipe" of nuclear weapons, so that the images flow through the front and back of the tragedy, and the mission, entrustment, and belief are closely connected with illness, death, crisis, and struggle.
In addition, "Top Secret Formula" realistically presents the terrible consequences of human exposure to nuclear radiation, but refuses to show the spectacle of disaster in any dimension.
In the film, Professor Matt's attitude towards the use of bone marrow transplantation for treatment changes from initial hesitation to full promotion, allowing the film to take into account the perspective of the history of medical technology in addition to the nuclear narrative.
In short, "Top Secret Formula" is a story about humanity's fight against weapons of mass destruction, but also a story about the triumph of death and war over the forces that will do whatever it takes to save lives. ”
In the face of disaster and illness, Professor Matt broke through his concerns about the position of nuclear weapons, and did almost everything to find a better treatment plan, even failing to make it to the scene when his wife gave birth; The medical staff of the Curie Institute did not regard these young Yugoslav scientists as enemies from beginning to end, and in their eyes they only saw "young men" and "little girls" who were seriously ill; This is especially true of the French men and women who finally bravely walked into the ward and surrendered their lives to the doctors, who let go of their political prejudices and were born with empathy that provided them with the greatest motivation.
Another English title of "Top Secret Formula" is "Chain Reaction", which can refer to the chain reaction that occurs in the nuclear reactor, or it can refer to various chain reactions in causal logic, and "making connections" is also the core idea of people in the movie to fight against nuclear hazards.
Oppenheimer, who made the atomic bomb come out, was pushed along by the chain effect of nuclear matter in a macroscopic sense, and fighting the threat of death became the theme of the legendary scientist's second half of his life; "Top Secret Formula", on the other hand, tries to tell the audience that in the face of irreversible disasters, rebuilding the "chain reaction" between people and abandoning prejudices can help restore our confidence as human beings.
Drawing on the unjustified help between people and individuals in the Curie Institute, director Dragan Bijeloglich reminds us that the greater qualities of human beings are always selflessness and goodness than the invention of a destructive force.
At the end of "Top Secret Formula", the film follows the principle of "Chekhov's gun" and unravels the foreshadowing of the film: it was the mechanic who left two coins for the young boys, the doctor brought the wig to the girl with shaved long hair, and the pregnant mother had long been secretly determined to lend a hand......
That's why, although it was Matt and Popovich who rewrote history, this "chain reaction" might never have happened without car mechanics, young mothers risking their lives to donate bone marrow, and countless ordinary people who donated blood for the sick.
"There are no Russians in the film, and there are no Germans. There is only one monster - war; There is also a miracle, which is life. Alekseevich wrote in "The Sacrificial Prayer of Chernobyl".
Faced with the question of why he wanted to make such a film, director Bijero Grich calmly replied: In order not to lose faith in people, I think I will always look for themes that praise people, especially to restore or strengthen the confidence of other people who watch the work, which may be my subconscious expectation of people.
This is undoubtedly the so-called "top-secret formula" that deserves our common protection: a respect for life, a call for the most precious qualities of human beings, transcending the divisions of position, gender, race, and all forms of the "Iron Curtain", cleansing the cruelty of war and disaster, and uniting us.
Hold Yoga
Editor-in-charge: Chai Yingrui