His world is full of lies
—— "Underground" film review
"Underground" is a surreal film by the former Yugoslav director Emil Kusturica, which is completely a tragedy wrapped in comedy.
The film mainly tells the story of the heroes Xiao Hei and Ma Gao in an exaggerated and absurd way, they both love the same woman Natalie, and a series of contradictions and events begin here.
The film takes the baroque style to the extreme. It emphasizes vulgarity and hedonism, and uses a large area of yellow and extremely substantial pictures to present it. At the same time, it is also a mixture of various styles, with a cold black humor. Comicalize a sacred scene. Laughing at historical heroes with an irony. And by singing hymns to praise Tito, in order to express the profound irony of heroism. People sang along numbly, and even the monkeys began to sing. At the same time, Ma Gao's life is embedded in the documentary clips, and the real history is embedded in the virtual characters. The audience is separated from the history with a sense of fading reality, and the virtual plot is also changed, making a great deal of satire on the absurdity of history. Even though Xiao Hei is portrayed as a hero, he does not do anything in the real sense from beginning to end, and the irony of personal heroism is clear at a glance.
At the same time extremely exaggerated performance. When Ivan was told that Yugoslavia was gone, he cried, not only of the characters he represented, but also of the director. When Xiao Hei was electrocuted, he used surrealism to reflect the magical realism of the film. At the same time, because the young people in the movie live in a huge basement, no one is normal. This is also a lament for the lack of young people in society. The plight of mankind is still incomplete for the next generation.
To a certain extent, the director put the whole country in a basement, and used extremely obvious shadows to separate the two worlds above and below. On the first floor, the basement is a refuge for people. The second layer is to build arms for Ma Gao. After the change of the third floor, the basement became accessible in all directions and could go anywhere freely. But this freedom is false. The flight of the bride at the wedding seems to be free, but it is also controlled. A lot of circular composition was also used, with circular movements celebrating the absurd, pulling the sacred circle off the altar. At the same time, the use of white animals shows the simplicity of Ivan and the ignorance of human beings.
In the final epilogue, it seems that everyone has come to a reconciliation. There is reconciliation in human relationships, and young people's illnesses are gone. The contour of the split continent is the shape of Yugoslavia. His world is full of lies, and he has never been understood.
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