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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love can nestle even in the most boiling war!, September 26, 2006
This review is from: Life Is a Miracle ( Zivot je cudo ) ( Hungry Heart ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] (DVD)
The peculiar filmography of Kusturica simply does not fit in previous models. His delirious narrative, the divine madness that hovers all his scripts, reminds us to Fellini but with loaded with beating urgency and vertiginous intensity.
An engineer has a nagging wife and a dreamy son. His wife will cheat him with a musician and his son is captured for enemy forces. On the road, he will meet a beauty and mysterious woman, who has been assigned as part of an exchange of prisoners, where precisely she will be exchanged by his own son. This web of encountered feelings will captive and engage you from start to finish.
There is much more to comment around the superb seconday personages but it would be a crime to make reference about them.
Go for this original proposal. A mesmerizing and ambitious movie that surely will move you.
Superb!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Kusturica's masterful blend of comedy, drama and romance among the war in Bosnia, August 19, 2009
This review is from: Life Is a Miracle ( Zivot je cudo ) ( Hungry Heart ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] (DVD)
Emir Kusturica's 2004 film ZIVOT JE CUDO (Life is a Miracle) is a story of love and loss and love again unfolding among the chaos of Bosnia's civil war. Luka (Slavko Štimac) is a Serbian engineer who has moved from Belgrade to a mountain hamlet in Bosnia. He has brought with him his wife Jadranka (Vesna Trivali'), a mentally ill opera singer, and his son Milos (Vuk Kostic), an aspiring footballer. Luka hopes that the mountain railroad he is building will bring tourism to the region, but just as it is ready, war breaks out. Matters with his wife deteriorate as she leaves him for a visiting Hungarian musician, but passion is kindled with the Muslim prisoner of war Sabaha (Natasa Šolak).
The tale is generally straightforward, but as always with Kusturica there are little elements of magical realism: the dead come to life, dream-like sequences sometimes stand in for the facts of war. This is Kusturica's second film on the breakup of Yugoslavia, the first being his masterpiece PODZEMJE (Underground). While familiar elements like the eroticism of bombings, wacky antics involving brass bands, and emblamatic animals are found here too, it never feels like Kusturica is repeating himself. So much in this film feels fresh and will prove quite memorable. This is all in all a strong effort and I would recommend it to anyone who likes international cinema. It is a pity that there does not yet appear to be a US release.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Kusturica's masterful blend of comedy, drama and romance among the war in Bosnia, August 19, 2009
Emir Kusturica's 2004 film ZIVOT JE CUDO (Life is a Miracle) is a story of love and loss and love again unfolding among the chaos of Bosnia's civil war. Luka (Slavko Štimac) is a Serbian engineer who has moved from Belgrade to a mountain hamlet in Bosnia. He has brought with him his wife Jadranka (Vesna Trivali'), a mentally ill opera singer, and his son Milos (Vuk Kostic), an aspiring footballer. Luka hopes that the mountain railroad he is building will bring tourism to the region, but just as it is ready, war breaks out. Matters with his wife deteriorate as she leaves him for a visiting Hungarian musician, but passion is kindled with the Muslim prisoner of war Sabaha (Natasa Šolak).
The tale is generally straightforward, but as always with Kusturica there are little elements of magical realism: the dead come to life, dream-like sequences sometimes stand in for the facts of war. This is Kusturica's second film on the breakup of Yugoslavia, the first being his masterpiece PODZEMJE (Underground). While familiar elements like the eroticism of bombings, wacky antics involving brass bands, and emblamatic animals are found here too, it never feels like Kusturica is repeating himself. So much in this film feels fresh and will prove quite memorable. This is all in all a strong effort and I would recommend it to anyone who likes international cinema. It is a pity that there does not yet appear to be a US release.
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