Serbian director Emir Kusturica, once a revered name on the arthouse European scene, is back in the helmer’s chair with On the Milky Road. His return to fiction feature filmmaking comes after a few years spent directing documentaries (Maradona by Kusturica), doing some acting and contributing to omnibus films (Words with God – with his short Our Life nominally serving as inspiration for this one, executive-produced by Guillermo Arriaga).
While his recent works have done little to sustain this, it’s still surprisingly difficult in the world of 2016 to readjust perceptions of Kusturica after his rapturous, wildly energetic early successes. And that constitutes further burden on his latest film – a highly self-indulgent, magical realist fairy tale of profoundly uneven quality.
Spanning fifteen years and harking back to the days of the civil war, On The Milky Road is the story of Kosta, a milkman who braves the path along the...
While his recent works have done little to sustain this, it’s still surprisingly difficult in the world of 2016 to readjust perceptions of Kusturica after his rapturous, wildly energetic early successes. And that constitutes further burden on his latest film – a highly self-indulgent, magical realist fairy tale of profoundly uneven quality.
Spanning fifteen years and harking back to the days of the civil war, On The Milky Road is the story of Kosta, a milkman who braves the path along the...
- 9/10/2016
- by Tommaso Tocci
- The Film Stage
CANNES -- Although Emir Kusturica's seventh feature, Promise Me This, can best be described as a boisterous adventure comedy, it doesn't really satisfy in terms of thrills or laughs. The Bosnian-born director runs through his usual box of magic tricks in this In Competition feature, but inspiration is missing and the movie will trade, if it trades at all, on Kusturica's name. Its prospects outside Europe and the festival circuit are slim indeed.
In a tiny hamlet high in the hills of Serbia, the young orphan Tsane (Uros Milovanovic) is made to promise by his grandfather (Aleksandar Bercek) that he will take their cow Cvetka to the nearest town and sell her, buy a religious icon with the proceeds, then find a bride in order that he can marry before his grandfather dies. The third inhabitant of the hamlet, buxom schoolteacher Bosa (Ljiljana Blagojevic), meanwhile, is receiving the unwelcome amorous attentions of a government inspector.
Cvetka is promptly stolen from Tsane by local hoodlum Bajo (Miki Manojlovic) and his goons, but Tsane succeeds in recovering her with the aid of Topuz (Stribor Kusturica) and Runjo (Vladan Milojevic), the little-and-large grandsons of Grandpa's old shoemaker chum Trifun. Having fulfilled the first two parts of his promise, Tsane sets his sights on the shapely Jasna (Marija Petronijevic) and immediately strikes up a rapport. But there are further un-pleasant surprises in store.
Bajo, who has grandiose plans to rebuild the World Trade Center in the Serbian countryside, also runs a brothel/strip joint in which Jasna's mother, Gica (Kosanka Djekic), works part time. Bajo inducts Jasna into this club and prepares to sell her into the white slave trade (with Gica's consent, since she owes him money).
Tsane and his resourceful friends come to the rescue in a series of raids, stratagems and cartoon gunfights in which no one is really hurt let alone dies. The action makes its way back to the village where, far from being at the point of death, Grandpa prepares to marry Bosa. Further mayhem ensues, rounded off by an inevitable happy ending.
With a relentlessly jaunty score and visual gags and pratfalls occurring at a rate of one a minute, the movie is presumably intended as a lighthearted, life-affirming romp. The characters are unfailingly colorful, and there are numerous Heath Robinson contraptions involving levers, mirrors, trapdoors, ropes and pulleys, one of the latter being an alarm-clock device that hurtles Grandpa through a window. As ever with Kusturica, people tend to defy gravity: A man is pumped full of air and floats to the ceiling. A human cannonball makes periodic appearances for no obvious reason.
While much of the comedy may be acceptable to young children, it's not at all clear to whom the movie is directed. The decision to make Tsane a 12-year-old suggests a pitch for youthful audiences. On the other hand, the language used by Bajo and his henchmen is reminiscent of a Scorsese movie. (A sequence from Taxi Driver is briefly glimpsed on television.) An apparent sex romp between Tsane and Jasna in the trunk of the car taking them back to the village will be seen by many as a serious failure of judgment.
The picture-postcard setting is faultlessly captured in Milorad Glusica's cinematography, and the action never flags. The overall impression left by Promise Me This is that of a director functioning on autopilot while waiting for a more challenging project to come along.
PROMISE ME THIS
Rasta International, Fidelite Films, France 2 Cinema
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Emir Kusturica, Ranko Bozic
Based on a story by: Rade Markovic
Producers: Emir Kusturica, Maja Kusturica, Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Director of photography: Milorad Glusica
Production designer: Radovan Markovic
Music: Stribor Kusturica
Editor: Svetolic Mica Zajc
Cast:
Jasna: Marija Petronijevic
Tsane: Uros Milovanovic
Bosa: Ljiljana Blagojevic
Grandpa: Aleksandar Bercek
Jasna's Mother: Kosanka Djekic
Bajo: Miki Manojlovic
Topuz: Stribor Kusturica
Runjo: Vladan Milojevic
Running time -- 126 minutes
No MPAA rating...
In a tiny hamlet high in the hills of Serbia, the young orphan Tsane (Uros Milovanovic) is made to promise by his grandfather (Aleksandar Bercek) that he will take their cow Cvetka to the nearest town and sell her, buy a religious icon with the proceeds, then find a bride in order that he can marry before his grandfather dies. The third inhabitant of the hamlet, buxom schoolteacher Bosa (Ljiljana Blagojevic), meanwhile, is receiving the unwelcome amorous attentions of a government inspector.
Cvetka is promptly stolen from Tsane by local hoodlum Bajo (Miki Manojlovic) and his goons, but Tsane succeeds in recovering her with the aid of Topuz (Stribor Kusturica) and Runjo (Vladan Milojevic), the little-and-large grandsons of Grandpa's old shoemaker chum Trifun. Having fulfilled the first two parts of his promise, Tsane sets his sights on the shapely Jasna (Marija Petronijevic) and immediately strikes up a rapport. But there are further un-pleasant surprises in store.
Bajo, who has grandiose plans to rebuild the World Trade Center in the Serbian countryside, also runs a brothel/strip joint in which Jasna's mother, Gica (Kosanka Djekic), works part time. Bajo inducts Jasna into this club and prepares to sell her into the white slave trade (with Gica's consent, since she owes him money).
Tsane and his resourceful friends come to the rescue in a series of raids, stratagems and cartoon gunfights in which no one is really hurt let alone dies. The action makes its way back to the village where, far from being at the point of death, Grandpa prepares to marry Bosa. Further mayhem ensues, rounded off by an inevitable happy ending.
With a relentlessly jaunty score and visual gags and pratfalls occurring at a rate of one a minute, the movie is presumably intended as a lighthearted, life-affirming romp. The characters are unfailingly colorful, and there are numerous Heath Robinson contraptions involving levers, mirrors, trapdoors, ropes and pulleys, one of the latter being an alarm-clock device that hurtles Grandpa through a window. As ever with Kusturica, people tend to defy gravity: A man is pumped full of air and floats to the ceiling. A human cannonball makes periodic appearances for no obvious reason.
While much of the comedy may be acceptable to young children, it's not at all clear to whom the movie is directed. The decision to make Tsane a 12-year-old suggests a pitch for youthful audiences. On the other hand, the language used by Bajo and his henchmen is reminiscent of a Scorsese movie. (A sequence from Taxi Driver is briefly glimpsed on television.) An apparent sex romp between Tsane and Jasna in the trunk of the car taking them back to the village will be seen by many as a serious failure of judgment.
The picture-postcard setting is faultlessly captured in Milorad Glusica's cinematography, and the action never flags. The overall impression left by Promise Me This is that of a director functioning on autopilot while waiting for a more challenging project to come along.
PROMISE ME THIS
Rasta International, Fidelite Films, France 2 Cinema
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Emir Kusturica, Ranko Bozic
Based on a story by: Rade Markovic
Producers: Emir Kusturica, Maja Kusturica, Olivier Delbosc, Marc Missonnier
Director of photography: Milorad Glusica
Production designer: Radovan Markovic
Music: Stribor Kusturica
Editor: Svetolic Mica Zajc
Cast:
Jasna: Marija Petronijevic
Tsane: Uros Milovanovic
Bosa: Ljiljana Blagojevic
Grandpa: Aleksandar Bercek
Jasna's Mother: Kosanka Djekic
Bajo: Miki Manojlovic
Topuz: Stribor Kusturica
Runjo: Vladan Milojevic
Running time -- 126 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 6/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
CANNES -- Emir Kusturica's "Life Is a Miracle" comes roaring at you with all the noisy exuberance and crazy frivolity of a Balkan festival. That the movie takes place during a cruel and dirty war underscores the filmmaker's tragicomic view. "Life" is the Serbian writer-director's attempt to put his feelings on film about the conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It's a big, messy movie filled with music and slapstick, but at its heart, it is a love story.
This will not be everyone's cup of tea. Kusturica overdirects many scenes as he strives to keep the screen in constant turmoil. And as much as one appreciates the marvelous, melodic songs emanating from the No Smoking Orchestra, the gypsy techno-rock band in which Kusturica plays guitar, the music tends to overwhelm the drama.
Yet within the chaos lies a love poem to the people of the Balkans and a sunny optimism that love will salvage humanity from the depths of its own self-destructive tendencies. The film appears headed for many festival and theatrical playdates throughout the world.
Kusturica, who wrote the script with Ranko Bozic, handles a "Romeo and Juliet" story with a nod to Shakespeare along with a few winks at Fellini, the Marx brothers and Brecht. He spends the first hour simply setting the stage.
In Bosnia in 1992, Luka (Slavko Stimac), a Serbian engineer from Belgrade, has dragged his opera-singer wife, Jadranka (Vesna Trivalic), and his talented soccer-playing son, Milos (Vuk Kostic), to a small village where he intends to build a railroad to link Bosnia with nearby Croatia and open up the spot to tourism. Colorful rustic characters cavort in this bucolic setting, with drunken parties and festivities erupting at a moment's notice.
Jadranka, despite suffering from an allergy to dust, breaks into song at every occasion. Nearly everyone is blind to the approaching war, which a local army captain (Stribor Kusturica, the director's son) assures people will never happen.
Then conflict erupts. Milos is called up by the army and is soon taken hostage. Jadranka disappears with a Hungarian musician. The army brings a Muslim woman, Sabaha (Natasa Solak), to Luka to be his hostage to exchange for his son. Only Luka, who is incapable of unkindness, treats her more like a houseguest. Eventually, the two fall in love, which complicates the matter of a hostage exchange.
Kusturica never lets his movie take a downturn into the carnage of war. Even as mortars pound the village and explosions rock Luka's house, life, love and music continue. There is an element of the surreal here, a kind of Balkan magic realism, that captivates.
This also allows Kusturica to get away with a lot of muddled mise-en-scene. Sequences spin virtually out of control, and characters do not behave in normal ways. Like the villagers, Kusturica refuses to yield to life's tragedies; he prefers to cling to its miracles. His film is, he himself declares, "sadly optimistic."
Because the film is a virtual concert by the No Smoking Orchestra, music clearly plays a central role with outstanding songs and lyrics. All other technical credits are first-rate, including Michel Amathieu's crisp, fluid cinematography, Zora Popovic's folkloric costumes and designer Milenko Jeremic's country dwellings.
LIFE IS A MIRACLE
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Ranko Bozic, Emir Kusturica
Producers: Alain Sarde, Maja and Emir Kusturica
Director of photography: Michel Amathieu
Production designer: Milenko Jeremic
Music: Dejan Sparavalo, Emir Kusturica
Costume designer: Zora Popovic
Editor: Svetolik Mica Zajc
Cast:
Luka: Slavko Stimac
Sabaha: Natasa Solak
Jadranka: Vesna Trivalic
Milos: Vuk Kostic
Veljo: Aleksandar Bercek
Captain Aleksic: Stribor Kustruica
Running time -- 154 minutes
No MPAA rating...
This will not be everyone's cup of tea. Kusturica overdirects many scenes as he strives to keep the screen in constant turmoil. And as much as one appreciates the marvelous, melodic songs emanating from the No Smoking Orchestra, the gypsy techno-rock band in which Kusturica plays guitar, the music tends to overwhelm the drama.
Yet within the chaos lies a love poem to the people of the Balkans and a sunny optimism that love will salvage humanity from the depths of its own self-destructive tendencies. The film appears headed for many festival and theatrical playdates throughout the world.
Kusturica, who wrote the script with Ranko Bozic, handles a "Romeo and Juliet" story with a nod to Shakespeare along with a few winks at Fellini, the Marx brothers and Brecht. He spends the first hour simply setting the stage.
In Bosnia in 1992, Luka (Slavko Stimac), a Serbian engineer from Belgrade, has dragged his opera-singer wife, Jadranka (Vesna Trivalic), and his talented soccer-playing son, Milos (Vuk Kostic), to a small village where he intends to build a railroad to link Bosnia with nearby Croatia and open up the spot to tourism. Colorful rustic characters cavort in this bucolic setting, with drunken parties and festivities erupting at a moment's notice.
Jadranka, despite suffering from an allergy to dust, breaks into song at every occasion. Nearly everyone is blind to the approaching war, which a local army captain (Stribor Kusturica, the director's son) assures people will never happen.
Then conflict erupts. Milos is called up by the army and is soon taken hostage. Jadranka disappears with a Hungarian musician. The army brings a Muslim woman, Sabaha (Natasa Solak), to Luka to be his hostage to exchange for his son. Only Luka, who is incapable of unkindness, treats her more like a houseguest. Eventually, the two fall in love, which complicates the matter of a hostage exchange.
Kusturica never lets his movie take a downturn into the carnage of war. Even as mortars pound the village and explosions rock Luka's house, life, love and music continue. There is an element of the surreal here, a kind of Balkan magic realism, that captivates.
This also allows Kusturica to get away with a lot of muddled mise-en-scene. Sequences spin virtually out of control, and characters do not behave in normal ways. Like the villagers, Kusturica refuses to yield to life's tragedies; he prefers to cling to its miracles. His film is, he himself declares, "sadly optimistic."
Because the film is a virtual concert by the No Smoking Orchestra, music clearly plays a central role with outstanding songs and lyrics. All other technical credits are first-rate, including Michel Amathieu's crisp, fluid cinematography, Zora Popovic's folkloric costumes and designer Milenko Jeremic's country dwellings.
LIFE IS A MIRACLE
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Ranko Bozic, Emir Kusturica
Producers: Alain Sarde, Maja and Emir Kusturica
Director of photography: Michel Amathieu
Production designer: Milenko Jeremic
Music: Dejan Sparavalo, Emir Kusturica
Costume designer: Zora Popovic
Editor: Svetolik Mica Zajc
Cast:
Luka: Slavko Stimac
Sabaha: Natasa Solak
Jadranka: Vesna Trivalic
Milos: Vuk Kostic
Veljo: Aleksandar Bercek
Captain Aleksic: Stribor Kustruica
Running time -- 154 minutes
No MPAA rating...
CANNES -- Emir Kusturica's "Life Is a Miracle" comes roaring at you with all the noisy exuberance and crazy frivolity of a Balkan festival. That the movie takes place during a cruel and dirty war underscores the filmmaker's tragicomic view. "Life" is the Serbian writer-director's attempt to put his feelings on film about the conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It's a big, messy movie filled with music and slapstick, but at its heart, it is a love story.
This will not be everyone's cup of tea. Kusturica overdirects many scenes as he strives to keep the screen in constant turmoil. And as much as one appreciates the marvelous, melodic songs emanating from the No Smoking Orchestra, the gypsy techno-rock band in which Kusturica plays guitar, the music tends to overwhelm the drama.
Yet within the chaos lies a love poem to the people of the Balkans and a sunny optimism that love will salvage humanity from the depths of its own self-destructive tendencies. The film appears headed for many festival and theatrical playdates throughout the world.
Kusturica, who wrote the script with Ranko Bozic, handles a "Romeo and Juliet" story with a nod to Shakespeare along with a few winks at Fellini, the Marx brothers and Brecht. He spends the first hour simply setting the stage.
In Bosnia in 1992, Luka (Slavko Stimac), a Serbian engineer from Belgrade, has dragged his opera-singer wife, Jadranka (Vesna Trivalic), and his talented soccer-playing son, Milos (Vuk Kostic), to a small village where he intends to build a railroad to link Bosnia with nearby Croatia and open up the spot to tourism. Colorful rustic characters cavort in this bucolic setting, with drunken parties and festivities erupting at a moment's notice.
Jadranka, despite suffering from an allergy to dust, breaks into song at every occasion. Nearly everyone is blind to the approaching war, which a local army captain (Stribor Kusturica, the director's son) assures people will never happen.
Then conflict erupts. Milos is called up by the army and is soon taken hostage. Jadranka disappears with a Hungarian musician. The army brings a Muslim woman, Sabaha (Natasa Solak), to Luka to be his hostage to exchange for his son. Only Luka, who is incapable of unkindness, treats her more like a houseguest. Eventually, the two fall in love, which complicates the matter of a hostage exchange.
Kusturica never lets his movie take a downturn into the carnage of war. Even as mortars pound the village and explosions rock Luka's house, life, love and music continue. There is an element of the surreal here, a kind of Balkan magic realism, that captivates.
This also allows Kusturica to get away with a lot of muddled mise-en-scene. Sequences spin virtually out of control, and characters do not behave in normal ways. Like the villagers, Kusturica refuses to yield to life's tragedies; he prefers to cling to its miracles. His film is, he himself declares, "sadly optimistic."
Because the film is a virtual concert by the No Smoking Orchestra, music clearly plays a central role with outstanding songs and lyrics. All other technical credits are first-rate, including Michel Amathieu's crisp, fluid cinematography, Zora Popovic's folkloric costumes and designer Milenko Jeremic's country dwellings.
LIFE IS A MIRACLE
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Ranko Bozic, Emir Kusturica
Producers: Alain Sarde, Maja and Emir Kusturica
Director of photography: Michel Amathieu
Production designer: Milenko Jeremic
Music: Dejan Sparavalo, Emir Kusturica
Costume designer: Zora Popovic
Editor: Svetolik Mica Zajc
Cast:
Luka: Slavko Stimac
Sabaha: Natasa Solak
Jadranka: Vesna Trivalic
Milos: Vuk Kostic
Veljo: Aleksandar Bercek
Captain Aleksic: Stribor Kustruica
Running time -- 154 minutes
No MPAA rating...
This will not be everyone's cup of tea. Kusturica overdirects many scenes as he strives to keep the screen in constant turmoil. And as much as one appreciates the marvelous, melodic songs emanating from the No Smoking Orchestra, the gypsy techno-rock band in which Kusturica plays guitar, the music tends to overwhelm the drama.
Yet within the chaos lies a love poem to the people of the Balkans and a sunny optimism that love will salvage humanity from the depths of its own self-destructive tendencies. The film appears headed for many festival and theatrical playdates throughout the world.
Kusturica, who wrote the script with Ranko Bozic, handles a "Romeo and Juliet" story with a nod to Shakespeare along with a few winks at Fellini, the Marx brothers and Brecht. He spends the first hour simply setting the stage.
In Bosnia in 1992, Luka (Slavko Stimac), a Serbian engineer from Belgrade, has dragged his opera-singer wife, Jadranka (Vesna Trivalic), and his talented soccer-playing son, Milos (Vuk Kostic), to a small village where he intends to build a railroad to link Bosnia with nearby Croatia and open up the spot to tourism. Colorful rustic characters cavort in this bucolic setting, with drunken parties and festivities erupting at a moment's notice.
Jadranka, despite suffering from an allergy to dust, breaks into song at every occasion. Nearly everyone is blind to the approaching war, which a local army captain (Stribor Kusturica, the director's son) assures people will never happen.
Then conflict erupts. Milos is called up by the army and is soon taken hostage. Jadranka disappears with a Hungarian musician. The army brings a Muslim woman, Sabaha (Natasa Solak), to Luka to be his hostage to exchange for his son. Only Luka, who is incapable of unkindness, treats her more like a houseguest. Eventually, the two fall in love, which complicates the matter of a hostage exchange.
Kusturica never lets his movie take a downturn into the carnage of war. Even as mortars pound the village and explosions rock Luka's house, life, love and music continue. There is an element of the surreal here, a kind of Balkan magic realism, that captivates.
This also allows Kusturica to get away with a lot of muddled mise-en-scene. Sequences spin virtually out of control, and characters do not behave in normal ways. Like the villagers, Kusturica refuses to yield to life's tragedies; he prefers to cling to its miracles. His film is, he himself declares, "sadly optimistic."
Because the film is a virtual concert by the No Smoking Orchestra, music clearly plays a central role with outstanding songs and lyrics. All other technical credits are first-rate, including Michel Amathieu's crisp, fluid cinematography, Zora Popovic's folkloric costumes and designer Milenko Jeremic's country dwellings.
LIFE IS A MIRACLE
Les Films Alain Sarde
Credits:
Director: Emir Kusturica
Screenwriters: Ranko Bozic, Emir Kusturica
Producers: Alain Sarde, Maja and Emir Kusturica
Director of photography: Michel Amathieu
Production designer: Milenko Jeremic
Music: Dejan Sparavalo, Emir Kusturica
Costume designer: Zora Popovic
Editor: Svetolik Mica Zajc
Cast:
Luka: Slavko Stimac
Sabaha: Natasa Solak
Jadranka: Vesna Trivalic
Milos: Vuk Kostic
Veljo: Aleksandar Bercek
Captain Aleksic: Stribor Kustruica
Running time -- 154 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/15/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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