The first time I saw Kusturica's work was a short film in "All the Neglected Children". It was also a bright and joyous atmosphere, and it was also a story full of absurd plots. I felt a kind of pain rising from the bottom of my heart and spreading to every nerve of my fingers. And in this 167-minute movie, I deeply felt the power of the director’s magical realism. At the end of the movie, I almost shed tears, the decadent battlefield, and the bells ringing on the smoky ruins. , They are not the most uncomfortable, but the end still appears along the joyous atmosphere of the comedy with the sound of the band, the dancing crowd, and the island separated from the mainland without any space and time. Everyone floated to an unknown distance with joy...
This is a story with no results. Because it is a tragedy, but also a cruel reality. The reality is that it has already happened, and it is so miserable that even God cannot redeem it.
The film tells the story of Yugoslavia in 1941-1995, using a small underground arsenal as an entry point and perspective point to dramatically reflect the current situation of Yugoslavia during World War II in 1941-1945 and the Tito regime in Yugoslavia after World War II, and a deep satire. And expose.
The story begins in 1941 when Yugoslavia was occupied by Germany. German bombings and air raids were common scenes. However, there was still joy in the movie. This carnival was to celebrate Xiao Hei's joining the Communist Party. The two Yugoslav Communist Party members, Ma Gao and Xiaohei, are hooligan-like patriots. They raised funds for the Yugoslav Communist Party in all kinds of illegal businesses, and at the same time they satiated their own pockets. They have an irrepressible desire for delicacies and beauties. Compared with Ma Gao's wit and shrewdness, Heizi is even more wild and unruly. These two personalities also hint at their future destiny.
Ma Gao’s younger brother Ivan is Belgrade, the caretaker of the city zoo. He looked at the bombed scene in a panic and looked at the blood-stained animals. After he rescued the orangutan Songni, he ran home sadly and hanged himself and was killed by his brother Ma Gao. After being rescued, he and the family members of other Communist Party members were all transferred to an underground secret place as a place of refuge. This is an underground city where you can't see the sky (in fact, I quickly thought of tunnel warfare...Khan!), and it was also a refraction space carefully planned by the director. Here I begin to admire the director’s grasp, avoiding such a long time span of 1941-1995, just to say that a scene where Ivan hangs himself also echoes Ivan’s death at the end, desperate at the end of the movie Ivan hanged himself in the bell tower on the ruins. The sound of the honest bell was not so much a warning to the people of Yugoslavia, it was to ring the last bell for the dead motherland.
In this underground city, people kept making ordnance workers who thought they were helping the country drive away the invaders and providing Tito with weapons. They did not realize that they were all deceived by Ma Gao. They recited Tito’s name every day and regarded the revolution as a revolution. The highest honor, they believe in Ma Gao and even think that Ma Gao is a very reliable comrade. As the base's only contact with the outside world, Magao and his lover Natalie are actually using people to help them do military work and then sell the large amounts of money they have made abroad. They deceived everyone to say that World War II was not over, they watched the lives of the people under them, and they made fake news to defraud the underground "stability." And Xiao Hei, who was in charge of internal affairs, had always wondered that he believed his friends but didn't want to stay in this underground city. So on the day the tank was built in the underground arsenal, at the wedding of Xiao Hei's son, he was ready to rush out of the cellar to end the war.
On the other hand, the hypocritical Ma Gao is a respectable gentleman in front of the people. He fabricated the facts that Xiao Hei was dead, how he saved the country and how he struggled with fascism. The irony is that a fencer like "Tito's friend" turned out to be a hero in people's hearts. At the unveiling ceremony of the "Heizi Martyr Bronze Statue", Ma Gao fondly recalled how his close comrade-in-arms Xiaohei died heroically in guerrilla warfare. At the same time, the Yugoslav Film Studio decided to make a movie with Xiao Hei as the protagonist based on the memories of Magao, to commemorate the national hero.
At the wedding, the chimpanzee who was with Ivan sneaked into the tank to play, and fired a cannonball, blasting a hole in the cellar. Xiao Hei couldn't bear it anymore, he decided to ignore "Tito's order", take his son to look at the sky, and then fight to the death with the Nazis. Father and son came to the ground quietly with their weapons, and they met German soldiers shooting the guerrillas at the shooting scene of the memorial to the sunspot movie. Unknowingly, they opened fire on the actors who played the "Nazis"...The underground city fell apart in the chaos and everything was wiped out. People crawled out of the ground. Time flies. By 1995, Yugoslavia was once again caught in the flames of war. Bosnia. The war began, Xiao Hei still thought that the war was still going on, but he no longer knew his position, he could only say "belongs to my motherland". The Margao and his wife who were caught by the soldiers rectified the Fa on the spot because of the sale of arms. It was obvious that there was a cross where they were killed. The image of Jesus on it had been blown down and hung upside down on the cross. Knowing the truth about the deception, Ivan beat his older brother Magao who continued to sell arms in a wheelchair with a cane and left the sentence "God will not forgive" before committing suicide. Looking at the face of Jesus hanging upside down was actually a suggestion from the director. He already knew the unacceptable reality. It was truly a sin that Jesus could not redeem, and God was also an irretrievable sorrow.
The heroic protagonist in the movie, Xiao Hei, still cannot escape the tragic fate. Whether it is desperate for the motherland or the mouthful of "fascist bastards" can not change the no longer Yugoslavia, what he can face is the dark underground, the light of reality does not belong to their "underground people". "There is no more Yugoslavia on this earth." This is destined to no longer need heroes.
The endless sorrow and pain that arose in Kusturica’s heart. As a Serbian, all he could do was to end with a utopian fantasy. Such a tragedy was unacceptable, but he still used the most ugly pen and ink to paint. After this ending, people who have passed away appear on the screen. They are carnival on an island without time and space. This is their new country. A small island gradually separated from the mainland and drifting to an unknown distance. People are full of joy. All the sadness and gypsy of the expression on the face were swept away and it was almost as full of gypsy dance music as at the beginning. They were gone, and the people of these underground cities went to a blissful world, because there was a country called Yugoslavia.
At the end of the movie, in addition to the sorrow of being infected by the movie, it rises with the air around him and envelopes the surroundings, as well as the infinite admiration for Kusturica.
In terms of rhythm, he grasped a good yardstick and did not let such a long and informative film out of his control. The film is basically divided into three sections. 1941-1945 is the first paragraph, narrating the situation before the end of World War II, explaining the opportunity for the formation of the underground city, and also sketching two central characters-Ma Gao and Xiao Hei. They are connected by money, beauties, and rights. And hatred of fascism. But it is obvious that their motives are different, and their methods are also different. These two types of people are probably the two types of revolutionaries before World War II. Magao is a speculator, but in the end he owns everything and even became a politician of the Tito government. This is not so much a hint of the chaos within the Tito government as it satirizes the government's actual hypocrisy and hypocrisy. 1945-1991 was the second period of the Cold War. At this time, the Republic of Yugoslavia had been established. The people in the underground had no idea that they were deceived by Magao. They said long live Tito and long live the revolution. This state is actually the establishment of the Republic. The initial portrayal of "personality cult", also as the audience in the communist alliance countries after World War II, may feel more profound than Western audiences. At the same time, China is not copying the Soviet model and engaging in public ownership and collectivization, nor is it true. The time when the cult of personality prevailed. These are all reproduced in that small arsenal, but they are quite reasonable. The third paragraph was the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991-1995. Underground people crawled out of the cellars, but they could not face Yugoslavia where the scarred country had passed away. What awaits them is the reality of disintegration. Everyone Can't escape the most tragic ending. Those who have lost the asylum of the motherland and want to protect the motherland can only disappear along with the collapse of the underground...
Except for the third paragraph, no place in the movie has left the line of comedy a little bit, but behind this kind of laughter, there is a comparison. Crying is also a distressing accusation. I think as a native of Yugoslavia, Kusturica, his anger and reprimand are far less than his helpless sadness. Like the stuttering Ivan, he watched the taxi driver sarcastically and said "Yugoslavia? There is no more country like Yugoslavia on earth." And Ivan's indifferent narration at the end seems to be the director himself standing there crying.
"Underground" is a political film. It is a brave Yugoslav lady who stands up to accuse and expose the Tito government, and it is also a sad Yugoslav lady who stands up as the last memorial to the lost motherland.
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