watched this in two sessions–not because the film is so long but because one of us has trouble staying awake to watch anything that isn’t a korean soap-opera. i am a big fan of the kusturica films i’ve seen (arizona dream, underground) and had been meaning to get around to seeing his early stuff for quite some time now. this is really very good. it helps to know something about yugoslavian history (which i took a crash course in between sessions) for without it the political allegory doesn’t quite come across, but as kusturica says in an interview included on the dvd, it is a poetic-political film and i think would be affecting even without much historical knowledge. but i would recommend doing some brief reading online at least before watching. i’ll note a few random things briefly:
1) the film’s matter of fact approach to the body extends to the bodies of little children; perhaps this kind of thing is commonplace in european cinema but i can’t remember the last time i saw a film that actually displayed the genitals of young children (and in one scene in a latent sexual way). of course the film was made in 1985 in yugoslavia and i watched in 2005 in the u.s with an entirely different set of cultural narratives in play, and so i don’t want to make too much of the child-sexuality aspect of it–it just reminded me forcefully how less fussy attitudes to the body are in europe than in the u.s.
2) the film’s blending of a realist mode with a few brief magical moments. this is not as pronounced here as it is in arizona dream –which i think was on my “top 10 underrated films” list from 5 years ago (some of you here were part of that exercise john ran on email)–but is very nicely done. i’m not sure to what extent this is prevalent in his other early films. it isn’t just formal shtick here–it gives the political allegory emotional impact.
3) really amazing work with non-professional child actors. kusturica kicks spielberg and m. night shyamalan’s ass. dakota fanning seems even more like a mutant cyborg horror after seeing performances like that of the lead kid in this one.
i wish netflix had time of the gypsies. is it out on dvd?