Customer Reviews

Underground [VHS]

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As with Kusturica's "Black Cat, White Cat," it's almost impossible to summarize the plot of this film. Suffice it to say that the film is a quasi-realistic fable of perhaps 50 years in the history of Yugoslavia, beginning during WWII. It has everything - love, betrayal, greed, tragedy, comedy - even a touch of magic now and then.

I love the pure extravagance of this film. A tiger, trapped in ruins, reaches for the head of a defiant swan. An elephant steals a pair of shoes from an open, 2nd story window. A young woman flies through the air to her waiting groom - attached or not to a battering ram? Blacky, an electrician, has seemingly infinite resistance (pun intended) to torture by electrical shock - not to mention that he sleeps with his eyes wide open and charges on-stage while his lover is performing, ties her on his back, and carries her away.

And all this is done at the pace of the Marx Brothers on speed and with NO reliance on computer-generated graphics. It's all from the creative brains of the writer/director/cinematographer team. Forget realism - just take a ride on the back of this film and try to catch your breath!

If you have a DVD shelf do not group this movie with the rest of your collection. It deserves a throne, a piedestal to sit on all by itself, above everything else that has ever flickered over the silver screen. This movie is not seen, it is lived, expirienced, read like a book. The metaphors and similies in this movie equal any in any poem or a novel. Raw, inspired, dark, and bitter, it will twist your guts into a knot, which is precisly what the 50-odd years of history of the region it symbolizes does (Ex-Yugoslavia '41-'95) It is amazing how this movie manages to offer images and idealogy to represent the social changes in the society as well as mental changes in the people of the region.
On the next level, cinematography, acting, directing are all unrivaled, if at times overemphasized and overdone (but that's Kusturica for you)

If you ever wondered why all those wars in Yugoslavia broke out, don't watch documentary films about it, watch this movie. I am originaly from Yugoslavia, and I know how horrible that war was. And why did it brake out? Why did Serbs kill Croats, Croats kill Serbs,...? Why did brothers kill brothers when they all lived together under Tito only 10 years ago? Is Milosevic to blame? No, if the people didn't want to kill each other, they wouldn't have elected him. To find out the reason why it happened, we have to analyze WWII in Yugoslavia a little better. Thats exactly what this movie does. Even if you're not Yugoslavian, you will feel sad at the end of the movie. Yugoslavs are not crazy, war-loving animals, we are just hungry for party's, tuba music and just having fun. After seeing this movie, you will have a new understanding for the Balkans conflict and probably will be very mad when you hear someone say "Yugoslavia fell apart because those Slavs are nuts". I think that Emir Kusturica is a genius, and you will understand why when you see this movie.

Boris, from Vancouver (originaly from SUBOTICA, YU)

This film is filled with so much energy and joy that no audience can come out of it unmoved. This film has so many layers of story, that not one person will have the same impulses after seeing this picture. And isn't that what counts: to see a picture that makes you think what you just saw instead of just going mindless out of the cinema?

The story is perfect mix of tragedy, comedy, romance,hate. Everything we incapsulate in what we call a life. Underneith it tells the story of heroes,glorification of heroes, war criminals. It's not often i get swept away by a film but this film really managed to capture what the film medium can do. A mix of bitter sweet story, that changes emotions and attitude throughout the film

As original as two Coen brothers films combined and as moving as anything you will ever see........ Perhaps the best film of this decade... Seldom do you learn so much about the times you are living in as in this film. It's a must see for anyone who consider themselves even a bit interested in films. Masterpieces like this are so hard to come by that no one can afford to miss it.

Funny how film reviews are so easily transformed into political battlegrounds...or is it tragic? The anonymous reviewer from California is not alone in his or her one-star grading. The New Yorker had also ruthlessly criticized the political implications of the film in its 1995 review of Underground, which is not surprising, given the anti-Serbian sentiments of the US since the early nineties (which have multiplied as a result of the long-ignored ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians taking place in Kosovo as we speak), but also the inability of many Americans to comprehend the complex history of Yugoslavia, both pre- and post-Tito. No matter how 'well-informed' one claims to be, and no matter if one's political opinions are valid, one simply cannot obliterate the value of a film for its political background. But all this talk about politics obscures what this film is really about. Underground is not a political film. It is utterly clear to one who sees the it for what it is, and not for what some would like to interpret it as, that this is the expression of the director's personal anguish that the fall of Yugoslavia brought upon his life. So I ask you, who is anonymous-California-person or any Mr/Ms USA who feels that they have the authority or the 'well-informedness' to silence, or even worse, to invalidate the voice of a man who feels he has something to mourn. Many Americans can go about their lives without ever having to face any political reality whatsoever (or have you forgotten that most Americans don't even vote?) let alone being told by some guy in a blue hat that yesterday you had a country and now you don't. The situation of Yugoslavia is a tragedy all around, and this film expresses with sincerity the universality of its horrors. For any reader who was led to believe by bad reviews (which incidentally are far outnumbered by the good ones) that this film was propagandistic in any way, please don't let it keep you from seeing it. Underground is not only one of the most artistically exquisite films ever made --it is also a genuine expression of hopelessness in a time of insanity.

'The Underground' deals with people's corruption, blindness of the followers (all of us are followers, so don't feel excepted), Balkan mentality, put in scene through perfect characters (played by perfect actors)... All that at a time of war, later socialism and finally destruction of post WWII socialist ideals. In fact, the first version of 'The Underground' I saw, was the 5 hour-long marathon version. After some months I came to see the shorter cinema version. Whatever version you come along don't miss to watch it.

It is a masterpiece of Kusturica's surrealism, just remember the scene after the first nazi bombing of Belgrade, when animals of the zoo run freely on the streets.. Or the underground system.. Remember the electric shocks, the making of the war movie.. Most of the scenes are just perfect as well as the scenario. Perhaps you need to be somehow connected to the Balkans to understand scenes like the one when Lazar Ristovski (Blacky) asks the gipsy musicians to follow him as he goes to the toilette. Some people argue that this movie is too political, but I would say that it is more about people than politics.

Bregovic, the maker of the music for this movie, has created something far greater than he had expected. By now, the music theme is extremely popular in Serbia and can be heard everywhere on Belgrade's streets performed by little gipsy groups.

Since 'The Underground' is not comparable to any other movie, and only because of that, I won't say that it is the best movie ever. However it is still influencing my judging of other movies. It is the most important movie to come out of the Balkans and represents a landmark in European film history. Simply said, it is perfect.

Out of the collaboration of three ingenious artists, Dusan Kovacevic, the great writer of comedy, Emir Kusturica, a master of the absurd in film-making, and Goran Bregovic, the most wonderful musician alive, arose "Underground", the most ambitious, most daring, and perhaps simply the best motion picture of the nineties. Kusturica is a supreme magical realist of cinema; he has a hold on the absurd like very few other film directors. For this reason, he was clearly the best man to try and adapt Kovacevic's novel "There Once Was a Country" for the screen. The novel is a brilliant allegory of fifty years in Yugoslav history (1941-1992), written in a multitude of styles, from fairy tale, to comic sketch, to classic tragedy. The scope of the story is enormous, and even Kusturica seems to have some trouble pulling it off, especially towards the end, as the film tends to get out of hand and become rather hard to follow. Nevertheless, on the whole Kusturica's telling of the story is successful. His wonderful direction is only enhanced by the superb cast, hilarious and mad as it is. Performances by already established actors Miki Manojlovic, Slavko Stimac and Lazar Ristovski, as well as the less well known Mirjana Jokovic, are delightfully original, and truly masterful. The film also features a phenomenal soundtrack by the forementioned Bregovic. This is a movie everyone should certainly see, though in all honesty it is only the peoples of Yugoslavia who can truly appreciate it. In fact, the movie is dedicated to those few lost generations who lived through the period in question.

Spellbinding, moving , comic and tragic at the same time, this movie portraits in a amazingly focussed manner the chaos that is Yugoslavia... its beauties, virtues, its paradoxes, treacheries, its people full of life... when is the DVD coming? (the music by Goran Bregovic is a treat by itself)....

Magic, wild, powerful, absurd and disturbing at times. It pulls you in from the opening shot set to the wild score of the gypsy brass band, following guns-wielding, slivovoce-swigging main characters, Blacky and Marko. (A note on the band: The name of the band is "Boban Markovic Brass Orchestra", one pretty difficult to come across. Buy "Jova Stojiljkovic and his brass Orkestar" or as one of the reviewers suggested - "Fanfare Ciocarlia"(Amazon has them both). Band is present almost in every shot, which as a lover of Balkan music, I greatly appreciated. Through the first 2/3 of this epic, its music swirls you through a carnival of masterfully filmed events(weddings, brawls, deaths, fights, escapes, etc) right to the nightmare of the Bosnian war. Then smile is instantly wiped out from your face, as you watch former Yugoslavia burn amd the protagonists anihilate each other. In the final scene all the characters meet and party again on an island, drifting away, for the first time under a broad daylight. As a whole, this film is an uproarious, fast-paced, out-of-control comedy and a powerful testament against stupidity and absurdity of war.

This movie exempiflies one correct use of the media. There is a difference between a good movie and a good story. Few movies actually are able to combine both throughout the duration. I was stunned and have watched it many times. Could someone please tell me what the easiest way to find the soundtrack: it's label, the name, etc. Thanks.