Underground

It’s 1941 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and life is good for Marko Dren (Miki Manojlovic) and his brother-in-law Petar “Blacky” Popara (Lazar Ristovski), who has just been accepted into the Communist Party. But just as the two men are celebrating the event – as loudly, raucously and hedonistically as you would expect in an Emir Kusturica film – the country is invaded by German troops. Undeterred, Blacky and Marko make the most of the situation, dealing in the blackmarket not only to keep themselves comfortable, but also using the proceeds to purchase arms for the resistance, many of whom are hidden in the underground cellar belonging to Marko’s father.

Although married to Marko’s sister Vera, who is pregnant and gives birth to his son Jovan while down in the cellar, Blacky has been seeing a stage actress Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic). With the arrival of the German’s in Belgrade however, Natalija has transferred her affections to a German officer Franz (Ernst Stötzner), in order to ensure that her brother Bato gets the medicine and treatment he needs. To win her back, Blacky plans an audacious abduction and impromptu wedding, but their reckless exploits have the German troops on their trail. To add to the complications, Marko is also in love with Natalija, so when the opportunity arises, Marko retires Blacky to the underground cellar with the rest of his family.

In the years after the war, Marko marries Natalija, rises in influence with the Communist Party and becomes a close colleague of Tito. Meanwhile, Blacky and the other partisans have spent 20 years in his basement, believing that the fascists are still in power. Unaware that the war has ended, they continue to produce weapons for the struggle, but they are getting impatient.

Underground is another tragicomic opera on a grand scale from Emir Kusturica. Building on a solidly defined background of historical events - the film makes use of reworked documentary footage - and family life in Belgrade in the pre- and inter-war years, all the familiar ingredients that would make up his subsequent films are found here; a couple of crazy, high-living gangsters and their cartoon antics, earth shattering war-time situations, a raucous marriage or two, youthful rights of passage, women with powerful asses, a whole menagerie of wild and domestic animals, all of it backed up by the constant cacophony of a gypsy folk band always in the background providing the action with its own soundtrack. Kusturica packs as much of this as possible into each frame of the film, throws in a soupcon of grenades for flavour, shakes it around and sits back while the whole thing explodes into a stunning and spectacular film.

That actually makes it sound like a film out of control, but nothing could be further from the truth. While it is indeed hard to believe that such an anarchic and outlandish idea with such completely over-the-top characters could be harnessed into anything coherent, Kusturica, with a few nods to Fellini and Nino Rota, conducts every element with precision, the impact of every scene from its script, dialogue, delivery, performance and direction judged to perfection, in balance with the heightened emotions of the characters and the political climate. It’s not just a virtuoso display for the sake of it – the whole approach is integral to the spirit of the characters. Realistic Underground is not - at least not in terms of naturalism - but in spirit it captures everything Kuristica wants to say about the period, about life, politics, families, war – everything it means to be Yigoslavian and part of its history.

Necessarily, that encompasses both comedy and tragedy, and again those aspects are treated with equal weight in the film. The underground cellar, while providing a great deal of amusement, is also an allegory for the interwar years, the people in captivity, living in fear, “protected” from the outside world, constantly under the watch of the Communist authorities. The impact this has on the people is made evident, in comic and tragic terms, in the situation of Blacky’s son Jovan, (Srdjan Todorovic), born “underground” in this period, he knows nothing of the outside world, and in Ivan (Slavko Stimac), the zookeeper who, once released, is overcome with disbelief over what they have endured. With the film moving into the present-day, the ground is laid then for the even greater tragedies that subsequently unfold in the Bosnian war, where fratricide is both symbolically and literally enacted.

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DVD
Underground is released in the UK by Artificial Eye. The DVD is encoded for Region 2 and is in PAL format.

Video
Underground is presented in an aspect ratio of about 1.80:1 with slight window-boxing on all sides. There are certainly a few problems with the transfer, but largely it adequately captures the colour and tone of the film well. Colourful and golden-hued, it matches the look of other Kusturica films released on DVD by Artificial Eye, but has a similar lack of definition. Colours are slightly oversaturated here and there is quite noticeable colour bleed at edges, certainly in the early part of the film. Blacks also suffer, flattening out and being quite impenetrable, as do dark scenes, particularly the initial scenes in the cellar. This seems to improve as the film goes on, and it would actually look quite impressive on a small display. However, there are noticeable compression blocking artefacts and, outside of the close-ups, the lack of definition and the softness of the transfer becomes apparent.

Audio
The film comes with a choice of Dolby Digital 2.0 and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. The mixing on the 5.1 track is excellent, giving the almost constant music score room to underpin the frantic activity and loud dialogue going on elsewhere. That said, the quality of both mixes is lacking any real strength and clarity, with a little dullness in the tone certainly noticeable in dialogue.

Subtitles
English subtitles are provided and are optional, in a clear white font.

Extras
An Emir Kusturica Filmography provides brief biographical information on the director as well as a filmography. Kusturica and all
the principal cast contribute to the Behind The Scenes (20:49) feature, discussing characters, the story and the method of working. The Production Designer also gives some information on the creation of set and costume designs, and there are a few clips of on-set preparations for filming. Kusturica is briefly interviewed in the Cannes After Show Party (2:52), giving his reaction to the film’s rapturous reception at Cannes in 1995, where it would go on to earn the director his second Palme d’Or. Trailers are included for Black Cat White Cat (1:36), Underground (1:05) and Life Is A Miracle (1:42). The dynamic quality of the films comes through and probably benefits from the concision of the trailers.

Overall
Every time Artificial Eye release a new Emir Kusturica film on DVD, I find myself stretched to find the necessary adjectives and superlatives to convey the impact of an incredibly dynamic and unique film style that is full of energy, life and meaning. One of the director’s best films, Underground really stretches the reviewer trying to convey its strengths. Inventive and constantly surprising, Underground is a dazzling display of wild, exuberant, anarchic humour blended with tragic undertones, imaginatively scripted and visually stunning, every single frame a veritable cornucopia of delights, filled to bursting point with action and meaning, all performed and directed with an operatic brio that touches on the essence of the lives of the people of Bosnia-Serbia. Artificial Eye’s DVD release doesn’t present the film in its best possible light, the source elements again being of lesser quality, but the strengths of the film are no less apparent.