UNDERGROUND Movie Review

Once Upon a Time There
Was a Country
Il Etait une Fois un Pays

Marko and Blacky, two wild and crazy Yugoslavian friends, join forces to fight the invading Nazis in 1941, hiding in a cellar to produce much-needed munitions. When the war ends, however, Marko (now dwelling above ground in the “real” world) neglects to inform Blacky, and continues to exploit his patriotic fervor to keep producing the still-in-demand weapons that have so tragically and so profitably become a growth industry. As the nation experiences more wars—and ultimately fractures into non-existence—the two former friends eventually meet again amid the terror and madness of Bosnian battlegrounds. To allude to Underground as a comedy is not to be callous—on the contrary, this is one of the darkest visions of the human condition in recent years. But what director Emir Kusturica has given us here is a massive (nearly three-hour), visionary three-ring circus of human folly and tragedy, but one that never fails to entertain and astonish, even while it appalls. As a cry of outrage and despair, Underground is remarkably coherent and humane; it is a cynical, powerful, mournful epic that grieves for the loss of a nation and its culture—its final image a perfectly visualized, delicately balanced metaphor that stays in the mind more indelibly that any newsreel footage of inexplicable atrocities. The deserving winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Underground was turned down by every major American distributor for years, but was finally rescued by Daniel Talbot's indispensable—and often heroic—New Yorker Films.

NEXT STOP … When Father Was Away on Business, Tito and Me, Before the Rain

1995 192m/C FR GE HU Miki Manojlovic, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic, Slavko Stimac, Ernst Stotzner, Srdan Todorovic, Mirjana Karanovic; Cameos: Emir Kusturica; D: Emir Kusturica; W: Emir Kusturica, Dusan Kovacevic; C: Vilko Filac; M: Goran Bregovic. Cannes Film Festival ‘95: Best Film; Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards ‘98: Best Foreign Film. VHS NYR