Director: Emir Kusturica
"Since Underground underlined a dark part of my country's history and mentality, I was trying to make this story lighter, like gypsies who know that it is easier living one meter above earth; than two meters below. So we found a beautiful place with beautiful color and sunlight and filmed all these people in beautiful gypsy-Versace dresses." Emir Kusturica
The former area known as Yugoslavia still has plenty of quality films being made today. The best director from that region for the past decade had been Emir Kusturica who almost retired for good after a few French intellectuals accused him of making a bogus political message with his previous movie Underground. Fortunately for use, his film crew approached him in 1997 and gave him some ideas for a documentary concerning a Gyspy band playing at a wedding on The Danube and the next thing they knew he was writing a script.
Kusturica's directing has been compared to Fellini's, and true there is a sophisticated wackiness as well as similar directorial techniques, but Kusturica is a little more playful (goofy at times), which has a definite fatalistic Eastern European flavor.
Amid this goofy hyperactive tale are gold-teethed smiling gypsies robbing one another, musicians tied to trees playing traditional polkas, a big-haired woman who pulls nails out of wooden boards with her ass, old men resurrected from the dead and a car eating pig. And if that’s not crazy enough he has numerous characters dancing, prancing and partying at every opportunity.
Besides the standard funny performances on would expect from a comedy the film is a triumph of technique. He uses a narrative density which fills the foreground, mid-ground and background of each frame with characters (including cats, dogs, ducks, geese and other farm animals) darting around adding to the multitude of plot points. One scene on the Danube is such an eyeful that on a second viewing I noticed that the action in the background was as funny and active as the main focus of the film. Fortunately the narrative is light enough to keep from being too confusing.
The main story is of a young man Zare (Florijan Ajdini) who has fallen in love with a lithe local girl Ida (Branka Katic) but who is obligated--in a phony wedding set up by his brother -- to marry his cousin who nobody wants to marry because she’s four feet tall (they call her a “mean little dwarf”). His father Matko (Bajram Severdzan) is a greedy buffoon who gets himself financially tangled with his shifty cousin; a local thug who scams everyone within shouting distance including his own family. The film plays itself out with each character basically getting his just rewards or deserved comeuppance.
Everyone in the film is a con artist; whether they are pulling a con for love, money or life. But the film poses only one question: 'Will the two young lovers find solace and true love amid the strife of familial obligations?' Kusturica throws this romantic section into the mix but the point of the film is centered more on capturing the wild atmosphere and the spirit of the gypsies on The Danube.
Unlike Underground--or many of his past films--Kusturica is lighter on the politics. One could argue that Gypsies have a long political tradition and the film does deal with hard time economics as well as the solid traditions that Eastern European families follow, but it's all done for humor. Some have been critical of Kusturica for portraying Gypsy's with such sterotypical glee and I don't think he can defend himself on that argument but if you watch the film and you laugh then he has surely succeeded to some degree.
Matt Langdon
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