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In Vajtojca (The Weeper), Paci explores the folkloric as it would predicated on his own death. After giving a professional weeper a cursory summary of his life, he lies corpse-like while she weaves an arrestingly beautiful lament on his behalf. The performance ends when Paci sits upright and gives her a hug and a handshake for a job well done. The sudden introduction of a Balkan allegretto, however, retroactively casts the piece as slapstick. Paci rises from the dead, not as an artist, but as Roberto Benigni, whose film Life is Beautiful required a large dose of schmaltz to carry off its shameless mixing of humor and the Holocaust. The Weeper, on the other hand, manages to be sentimental without being ironic or cloying, simply by knowing how to place a maraschino cherry on a quiver of emotion centuries old.
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