fascists...monkeys....explosions...more fascists....

one of the first things that came to mind when watching this film was why haven’t i seen it before? i remember vaguely hearing about it some time ago, but now that i’ve finally seen it, i’m really surprised that i haven’t heard a lot more about it. not only did “underground” win the palme d’or at cannes in 1995, but it is a seriously beautiful, passionate, moving film.

directed by emir kusturica, the story begins in 1941. although yugoslavia is starting to feel the encroaching war, best friends marko and blacky don’t initially seemed deterred from a hedonistic life of smuggling and generally bad behavior. marko is the suaver of the two, with a twiddly little mustache, who cheerfully visits prostitutes and gets off on bombing raids. blacky, the more heroic of the two, cheats on his pregnant wife vera with ditzy actress natalija. the real trouble starts when the war gets closer and marko falls for natalija. through a wacky chain of events involving an interrupted play, an forced almost-elopement, and a nazi raid, marko shuttles an injured blacky, vera, his brother ivan, and ivan’s chimpanzee soni (a long story involving a zoo) to safety with a group of workers at an underground munitions factory. the group seems fine with the idea of waiting out the war, stirring their fever for their homeland as they continue to manufacture arms and live their lives, with an awful lot of partying accompanied by a raucous brass band. the only problem is that marko, having confessed his love to natalija, isn’t compelled to tell them once the war has ended, and keeps up the charade that the danger of the lurking fascists is ever-imminent. he keeps this up for twenty years, during which time he becomes a poet, natalija’s husband, and, oh yes, one of tito’s chief advisors.

i’m not even scratching the surface of the plot here. i mean, the movie does clock in at just under three hours, which is probably my only possible complaint. the whole film is soaked in this bizarre sort of magical realism, actually quite reminiscent of jonathan safran foer’s novel ‘everything is illuminated’ (but not the movie; the movie was largely crap save the supporting role from the lead singer of gogol bordello.) there is a bride who jumps into a well and swims into a lake, the aforementioned monkey, soni, who lives alone underground for twenty years (this scene of monkey/human reunion is way better than the end of “project x’, my previous standard for emotional scenes with animals), and a father who keeps asking if anyone has seen his son, who drowned decades before. and while the film doesn’t break with this magical realism, it turns from the wild, whimsical aura of the first half of the film to horror-fraught scenes of the yugoslav wars in the nineties. there is a viscerally powerful scene involving a wrecked statue of christ crucified upside down while a motorized wheelchair containing two flaming human bodies runs in circles around it. not sure I’ll be able to forget that one.

and yet, somehow, the movie manages to end on an upbeat, if wistful note. this is really an incredibly enjoyable film, which is saying something for a film that has some fairly gruesome depictions of war. the last scene is tremendously beautiful, all the more so as the characters are celebrating a place which no longer exists outside of their memories.

p.s. the film is accompanied by a fantastic score by the fantastic goran bregovic, who also did the score for 'la reine margot', which, like with that film, makes me want to go out and buy all of his cds.

matthieu amalric and i are practically twins.

well, sort of.

in olivier assayas' dreamy 1999 film, 'fin août, début septembre', amalric briefly holds down a job coordinating the publication of an encyclopedia, just like me! okay, so mine have to do with science, his has to do with literature. i have a cubicle, he has an office. but really, nearly twins.

amalric plays gabriel, a chronically out-of-work aspiring novelist who doesn't seem to write all that much. drifting between his ex, jenny, and the somewhat more exciting anne, he seems fairly aimless until his good friend adrien (francois cluzet), a moderately successful writer, begins to suffer from a never-named disease. not that gabriel ever becomes that much less aimless, mind you, but he does seem to realize over the course of the film that sometimes decisions have to be made, and made by him.

cluzet's adrien is darker and more disturbed than i've seen him, even more than in last year's wonderful 'tell no one'. but assayas doesn't delve too deeply into his character. although if you think about it, he doesn't really delve too deeply into anyone's character, which is really what gives the movie a presence that is different than most. early on, an interviewer is expressing his views over adrien's novels, commenting that the problem is that there's really not much of a story to any of them. gabriel replies that real life isn't so much stories anyway. and he's right. people are so often obsessed with movies being two hours of non-stop event, and that honestly doesn't resemble life at all. in this way, the film really was reminiscent of assayas' earlier film 'clean', starring maggie cheung, in that you have people wrestling with these huge issues (addiction in 'clean', love and death in 'fin août') and although these thing obviously have tremendous impact on their lives, there are still such a lot of in between moments when you're just left without an awful lot going on.

apart from amalric, the rest of the ensemble cast was great. although, virginie ledoyen seems a little young and a little hysterically beautiful for gabriel's restless vaguery. and a small subplot involving adrien and his fifteen-year-old lover was more than a little icky.

i was...mildly disappointed in the ending. but that may just be a girly hope that gabriel would choose the less attractive girl. but he didn't, and i still work in a little cubicle with piles of scientific encyclopedias.

oh, anthony.

i was sitting on the a train today for what seemed like years, and i suddenly noticed a smell that made me think instantly of someone, but i couldn't remember who. after concentrating for a few minutes, i realized that it smelled of my friend anthony, whom i haven't seen in, oh, ever so long. it smelled of him, of his parents house in kilkenny where i spent the night after the halloween party, where we stayed up until 4 eating bananas and frozen pizzas. it smelled like his clothes in the back of the tiny theatre. i never liked the smell. i always thought that it was a drawback, just a funny, slightly sour, pungent smell. maybe it was his hair gel? i don't know. but i remember not liking it.

but today when i smelled it...i wanted to chase it around the subway car, pounce on it and force it into a jar so i could keep it with me. in the film "the holy girl", amalia takes shaving cream and rubs it into the fabric of her collar, periodically sniffing it. i wish i could have done it with that smell. and i don't know where it came from today -- was it the wet? does anthony really smell of rain?

anthony was my best friend for a short period of time. it's been five years since i've seen him, at least one since we've talked, and then only via email. it's not that we had a fight, or decided we didn't really want to be friends. sometimes you are just no longer friends with someone and that's just the way it goes. maybe it wouldn't work to stay friends with everyone anyway. it's just one of those things, but it doesn't mean that i love him any less. it's sad, but it's not. he was a time in my life, a time and a smell. and i'm happy enough to just remember what a time it was.

i don't know where anthony is now. last time we talked i think it was oxford. he won't read this. but i hope someday soon he might come across something that reminds him of me. and that will be enough.