The movie I most recently watched was the award winning movie Underground by famed director Emir Kusturica. Let me first start out by saying that this movie had some strange moments, but I think the dark humor worked for well on the whole. I believe it was used to lend surrealism to the situations in the movie (such as the monkey getting in the tank), which almost masks the darker nature of the film. It was mentioned in a presentation on Yugoslavian film that they tend to use a darker sort of humor and maybe this was due to all of the trials and tribulations they went through.
Peter Popara ("Blacky") best represents the craziness of all the ordeals. He looks like a madman (or a young Einstein), with crazy hair and a mustache to match. At first, Marko leads the audience to believe that Blacky is more about the wealth gained from helping the Russians, but we learn later that it is Marko who leads a weapons-dealing operation in order to amass a large fortune. Blacky is so dedicated to the Russian cause that he leads an attack against, what he believes, to be a large German force with only his son for backup. For 20 years he waits for the call to action (even though the war is long over), while Marko weaves a tale of lies and lives in luxury. To further add to it, Blacky fights in the Yugoslav wars of 1992, while Marko sells weapons for his own benefit, without any care for his country. Both Marko and Blacky symbolize two different characterizations of people in Yugoslavia: those who are patriotic and those who want to capitalize on the war.
The ending of the movie somewhat reaffirms this statement as a piece of land containing the characters who were underground breaks off and floats away. Pavle Levi states that this is representative of "the pure, uncompromised Yugoslav Ideal," which is an antithesis to the scenes of the underground. Ivan's final monolouge reaffirms this as he states the they "will with pain, sorrow, and joy...remember our country...", thus ending the Yugoslav Ideal.
-Julian
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2 comments:
Very interesting comments. Surrealism is a vehicle that the filmmaker uses to reveal the atrocities and contradictions in war. I enjoyed reading your film critique on "Underground."
oh, this is an analysis? THIS is an analysis? you know, I'm actually studying this shit, and I can't find a good analysis anywhere because of douchebags like you who have no idea what the fuck a movie analysis means. An analysis should involve camera movements, what certain symbols in the movie mean, subliminal shit, not just a summary of the plot and an interpretation of it. That's what this is, an INTERPRETATION, not an analysis.
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