If only he had stuck to making films, and not gone into politics...

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2006)

This is a very difficult movie to judge. It is definitely a very powerful film, well photographed, acted and directed, but in my opinion also with some major flaws. The main problem is that Kusturica cannot make up his mind whose side he is on, and this, for someone coming from the ex-Yugoslavia and who has witnessed the happenings, is unbelievable. Apart from being nostalgic for the "good old days when all the people where united, happy and carefree" (even though he does in a way, condemn communism), at the same time he is condoning almost every atrocity by telling us that "it is simply human nature"... For me, this is not enough.
When I heard during the civil war that he had left Sarajevo for Belgrade I found it to be strange, but only before having seen this film. Now all is clear. For a great secular Muslim director from Sarajevo (that is at least what he was before he became a Serb nationalist...) to make a Serbian propaganda film in the middle of a civil war involving these two ethnic groups, is simply too much. To make it even worse, in the film there is also a scene at the beginning (subtle but definitely there) where he pictures the entire Slovenian and Croatian nations as blatantly pro-Nazi, which is not only historically incorrect, but simply offensive to those peoples (after all, he seems to forget that his beloved Tito who fought and finally defeated the Nazis in Yugoslavia during WW2 was not a Serb, but a Croat). Last but not least, he conveniently forgets in the film how and why the whole mess in Yugoslavia started in 1991...
Kusturica is definitely a great artist (or should I say was), but since he has politicized himself, I am sorry to say, he has lost it. Trust the French to be the only ones to give him an award for this film.