'Podzemlje'

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2020)

Probably the best film no one hears about, Underground is so full of life yet soaked in death.
The director, Emir Kusturica has somehow turned the real world into a Fellini party, a Lubitsch romance with Alex Cox punk poetry mixed with Powell and Pressburger cinematic weight.
At 2 hours and 45 minutes Underground only ever rests when the chapter cards appear on screen. Starting with a mentally challenged innocent young man at a zoo trying to protect a chimp amidst a bombing raid. Two best friends who are firmly against Hitler's Nazis end up falling for the same woman, slowly pulled apart by deceit, war and lies. Ghosts are seen swimming in the lakes and underground basins. The characters live through three monumental wars, a huge film production and the murder of all their friends. Through all of this the movie is an absolute blast of energy and comedy. Effortlessly balancing all of the characters and all of the metaphor, Underground may be specifically about that part of the world but says so much more than just that part of the world.
The first hour is like watching the Farrelly brothers go to war. It's so funny, so gag filled that you can't believe the movie will be able to hit you with the emotion that it does at the end. Using incredible imagery and symbolism, that last 30 minutes is jaw dropping. You have a father and son entering into a surreal "real world" with no understanding of what's happening, friends burning alive in front of a church, a final image of the after life as all of the characters break away, literally, from the earth they stand on and float out to sea.
Merging fiction and fact in such an original way, even if it does use the same process that Forest Gump does, intercutting the film's characters into stock footage. The never ending film shoot that is based on the character's real life struggle smashes up with the actual characters it's portraying. What does this all mean? Fiction can be just as real and emotional as real life. Art can find a way to burrow inside of reality and provide better context. It's also a slight meta dig at the film industry, as the tyrannical director keeps screaming for more reality until someone actually dies. Even then the director is not satisfied with his actors.
This movie is such an experience. I have no connection to this Eastern European world. I was not alive during WWII, the cold war or the Serbian war. But the film can still illuminate other aspects of our lives even if the audience is removed from the scenarios it's showing us. What an achievement.