地下

电影是魔幻现实主义和后现代的，“歇斯底里”和怪诞不经的滑稽/荒谬闹剧，现实深刻的内在逻辑，无处不在的严谨、奇巧隐喻、象征，导演做了一件最不可思议的事-他最大程度上扭曲、解构了现实，加之些许现实因素，却让这一切比战地记者的镜头还富有现实质感和现实主义精神。另一方面镜头下的世界是模糊、廉价的，与它华丽的外表不是很般配，和现实的内在又反而隔了一层屏障，这也许是电影的失败之处吧。

它是一部宏大深沉之至当与《现代启示录》相媲美的史诗电影。不过与人类文明的视角相比较，它终究只是是南斯拉夫的，承载的再多，表达之中仿佛又少了一份“博爱”和庄严的“胸襟”。另一方面，无疑，一部紧密剖析、服务现实的电影，会比产自美国的现代启示录更多一分亲历者的真诚，并非隔岸观火艺术家的喃喃自语，这会给其带来无可比拟的穿透力。

一句人尽皆知，也被批驳得体无完肤，烂了大街的一句话，出自德国哲学家黑格尔-历史给人的唯一教训就是，人类不会从历史中吸取任何教训。现今看来依旧不假。地下的事情仍然在发生，悲剧裹挟着一言难尽的悲哀，美丽高尚的外表和不确定的未来漫长地延续着。

Variety:

By Deborah Young

If Fellini had shot a war movie, it might resemble “Underground.” Emir Kusturica’s epic black comedy about Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1992 is a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed. Its energy, coupled with its ringing (if simplistic) condemnation of the years of communism and the current war, make it one of the most emotionally engaging and exhilarating films at Cannes.

Though “Underground” has the potential to capture broad audiences for subtitled films, not all viewers will have the stamina to watch it to the end. A serious re-editing could benefit the film by giving it more structure; the repetitive central section, in particular, needs trimming to keep the dense story focused and clarify the relation among pic’s three parts.

Accompanied by a band of tuba and horn players whose rollicking gypsy music is reprised throughout the film, pic kicks off to a wild and joyous start. Leading the band is Marko (Miki Manojlovic), dancing and whoring his way through 1941 Belgrade. He and his best pal, Blacky (Lazar Ristovski), are at the same.

time patriots and gangsters, directing a black-market operation from a warren of underground tunnels, where Marko also holds on-the-run Communist Party meetings. In one of the film’s most brilliant scenes, a German air raid strikes the zoo where Marko’s innocent brother Ivan (Slavko Stimac) works. Kusturica’s vision of the bombs destroying defenseless caged animals goes straight to the heart.

Though the Gestapo is after them, Blacky and Marko continue partying. They hide their families in a cellar, where refugees have put together an underground munitions factory. After his wife dies in childbirth, Blacky begins courting headstrong actress Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic). When she rejects him in favor of Nazi officer Franz (Ernst Stotzner), Blacky shoots Franz, but the Nazi survives and throws Blacky in a torture chamber. Marko stages a farcical rescue dressed as a doctor and smuggles Blacky out.
While Blacky recuperates in the cellar, Marko seduces Natalija. As Allied bombers destroy what the Nazis have left of Bel-grade, Marko completes his betrayal: He makes the refugees in the cellar believe the war is still going on.

Twenty years later, Marko has become an important party boss. In the cellar, Blacky and the others keep manufacturing arms while they wait for Tito’s call to “the final battle.” Though they eat dog food and their lives are a lie, the cellar’s inhabitants believe they are living the good life, protected from the world’s evil.

The metaphor obviously relates to how Yugoslavs saw themselves under Tito’s rule. Situation climaxes during a long, drawn-out sequence in which Marko and Natalija, still posing as revolutionary fighters, go underground to attend the wedding of Blacky’s son Jovan. Ivan’s pet monkey frees the community by climbing into a tank and blasting a hole in the wall.

Pic’s final section, “The War,” takes place in 1992. Ivan learns the truth about his brother’s treachery, and the fate of the country he knew as Yugoslavia. Returning home, he finds a crippled Marko and aged Natalija dealing in arms and drugs with anyone who’ll do business. (Kusturica cameos as their unscrupulous client.)

Kusturica presents the conventional view that the conflict is a civil war in which all parties are guilty: The breakup of Yugoslavia is the great tragedy, and violence comes from all sides. Given the film and director’s high profile, this view is bound to be controversial among some viewers.
Manojlovic, a Kusturica regular, is superbly comic as the treacherous Marko. Ristovski has the wild-eyed brute appeal of a silent film comic, while Jokovic as his great love, Natalija, is a convincing opportunist. Stimac’s Ivan paradoxically shows his goodness through his affection for animals and his resemblance to his beloved monkey.

This mammoth film was largely financed by Ciby 2000, with additional funds supplied by Germany, Hungary and Eurimages. Kusturica’s regular cinematographer, Vilko Filac, paints the images like surreal nightmares. When the noise dies down a second, composer Goran Bregovic steps in with a blasting, irresistible score that draws heavily on gypsy source music.