A controversial film is a great film !!

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 1999)

"Once upon a time there was a country...".
The subtitle refers of course to Sergio Leone's nostalgic masterpiece "Once upon a time in America". Kusturicas epic has a lot of this operatic and nostalgic moods, which are so significant for Leones movie. Both movies seem to thematize the tragic loss of ideals and the loss of a certain concept of national identity.
But Underground has a lot more than Leones film considering its masterful play with metaphors and fictional realities, in which the protagonists are caught up in. The dystopian metaphor of the underground, the film within a film sequence, the imaginary island at the end of the film, they all suggest an interpretation of yugoslavian history that is far more sophisticated than the interpretations you find in all those recent books about the break-up of this country.
Communist Yugoslavia was a country that was based on lies and deceptions, is what the film suggests, lead by the arbitrary despotism of some tyrants, that manipulated reality and history. At the end there is a total despair and loss of reality. The Serbs still think they fight against fascists- now its the NATO.
Maybe Kusturica was right, when he suggested with Underground, that the people were kept for years in an anachronism and that this deception lead into the break-up of the country. I think one can not think about this film without speaking about the Serbs and there current situation.
The film is of course ambivalent and controversial, but isn't it exactly this characteristic which makes out of a good film a great one?