Product Details

• Actors: Moreno D'E Bartolli, Miki Manojlovic, Mirjana Karanovic, Mustafa Nadarevic, Mira Furlan
• Directors: Emir Kusturica
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: Serbo-Croatian
• Subtitles: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: November 11, 1997
• Run Time: 144 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302311985
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,322 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A delightfully warm comedy, seen through the eyes of a six year old boy who thinks his father is away on business, when in actuality he's been sent to the mines for having an affair.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must see movie., May 25, 2005

By	RamboAmadeus (Cincinnati, OH, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Father Was Away On Business (DVD)

I am quite amazed that there are no recommendations or comments on this picture from folks once lived life of Malik in ex-Yugoslavia. "The boy's very being does (not) becomes an expression of natural defiance toward the coming communist regime under Tito and its spirit-crushing regime" (cited /
re-worded from last comment) - he is just stepping out of his childhood.
On June 28th. 1948 (what a coincidence - on a same date in 1389 Turk army defeated Serbian army on Kosovo field and on a same date Gavrilo Princip in 1914 committed Sarajevo assassination on Austrian prince Ferdinand - creating excuse for Germany to start 1st.(Great) World War) members of Stalin's Informbiro kicked Yugoslavia out of membership of Joint European Communist Party.
That event gives birth to this movie.
I would recommend much deeper research to interested party on happenings in Yugoslavia (1945-1948 USSR -Yugoslavia relations) in order for that party to get a real feel for Yugoslav society happenings after Resolution of Inforbiro (Bucharest 1948). Eastern block sanctions towards Yugoslavia, few 5 year plans to swim out of those sanctions and hostile breakout from East produced deviant political society of 50's Yugoslavia.
Why am I writing all this historical rubbish?
It is an attempt to make you watch this movie again with (now) seeing Malik as Yugoslavia, his dreams as the Yugoslavian nation dreams, his sick and dying (first love) girlfriend as USSR, his mother as Tito, his father as all innocent Yugoslav political prisoners from early 50's, his father's policeman jailer and friend as Informbiro (Stalin), his father's girlfriend as only good reason to spend some time in political prison....etc...etc... And then comment me back. Or ask me for more info.
I am finding this movie context extremely complex. Being loaded with very hard to catch metaphors doesn't help its easy understanding.

14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Favorite!, June 20, 2003

By	P. Miller "crestview306" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is one of my all-time favorite movies! The atmosphere is dreamlike - expressed in the boy's sleepwalking and the unrepressable subconscious - a thing that communism disavows. Thus, the boy's very being becomes an expression of natural defiance toward the coming communist regime under Tito and its spirit-crushing regime. A classic flic. Highly recommended.

4.0 out of 5 stars Where the political becomes personal....., June 12, 2009

By	Matthew Watters (Vietnam) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Father Was Away On Business (DVD)

A surprisingly well-crafted dark comedy in which the political -- the exceedingly paranoid life behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s, when a passing expression of criticism of the Party could result in one being whisked off to a forced labour camp -- becomes exceedingly personal, a psychodrama played out within a single family. The film has one of the best opening sequences of any film, anywhere, a Bosnian peasant man sings Mexican folk songs with back-up vocals from two chubby little boys picking bay leaves in a tree, as he flirts with a young babushka driving a fence post until, in her distraction, she slams the pile driver into her foot. This whole sequence is such an amusingly peculiar clash of cultures, it's hard to imagine the rest of film could live up to it ... but it manages to, in its portrait of a Party hack with two young sons and a weakness for playing around on his wife. Sent to prison for a casual remark by his Stalinist brother-in-law, he and his extended family are not really an allegory (as one reviewer here intimates) but more like archetypes in a time of rapidly changing political fortunes, from pro-Soviet to pro-Tito regimes. The film lacks striking images but is a work of nuanced storytelling, with a fine eye for detail and (literally!) gallows humour.....