Old Stories: Hey Babu Riba

Love Behind the Berlin Wall

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When totalitarian empires begin to fall, creative minds begin to peek out from the crevices to re-establish culture and civilization. This happened in 1985 when the Serbian director Jovan Acin released “Dancing in Water.” The film was renamed Hey Babu Riba for its English release in 1986.

Frankly, Dancing in Water would have been a better name. One of the film’s conceits is that the five teenagers love Esther William movies and the girl in the group is nicknamed Esther. They’re young, innocent teenagers trying to make their way in the world while Tito, the head honcho of Yugoslavia, tightens his grip on the country.

The year in the film is 1953. The five teenagers are brought together in a rowing crew of four rowers, the boys, and a coxswain, Esther, or really Marjana. Their lives are upended by the communist regime and the bullies it attracts to its side. It’s time to change the world, so people need to be punched, humiliated, families broken apart, and people generally treated cruelly. Mankind must be better, or else. As the old saying goes, “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” But as the ideals for a new mankind trickle down into the general population they just become the means to power, abuse and manipulation.

The crew however is undaunted. They have each other, and that’s enough to keep their youthful flames burning. In a final courageous act, the crew rows across the Adriatic Sea to Italy, where they all start new lives in 5 different directions. One day, however, they receive a telephone call that serves to reunite them. This the lever to the action.

Hey Babu Riba is not a great film, but a very good one. The plot is a little overdone, and there is maybe a little too much symbolism. But overall the film is well made, with good cinematography and music, which plays a large role. And you can’t help but liking the five crewmembers. It’s worth a viewing, though it’s not an easy film to find. You can purchase a VHS or DVD of it online, but I know of no streaming service. Michigan’s electronic library catalog does not contain a copy either, though other states and countries might have one.

Just a few short years after the film was made the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe began a transition away from totalitarianism. It’s not an accident. When propaganda can no longer sustain a regime’s, or empire’s, myths, you won’t have to wait long for cataclysm, and Hey Babu Riba certainly helped to explode some of the myths of a humane Yugoslavia under Tito.

Because the main characters, the teenagers, are so likable, the film’s depiction of totalitarianism really hits home. In the end though it’s the humanity of the crew which triumphs.