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.
No comments:
Post a Comment