In a sentenceThe slapstick earns its laughs, but 170 minutes is a long time to be shouted at
Underground follows Marko Dren (Predrag ‘Miki’ Manojlović), Petar ‘Crni’ Popara (Lazar Ristovski) and Natalija Zovkov (Mirjana Joković) across decades of Yugoslavian history. War and political deception shape a story in which ideas of heroism meet slapstick, black comedy and suffering. Slavko Štimac plays Ivan Dren, with Ernst Stötzner as Franz and Mirjana Karanović as Vera. Emir Kusturica directs from a screenplay co-written with Dušan Kovačević. The film moves between comedy and war drama as it considers the lies people accept and the damage they do.
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Emir Kusturica’s Underground has enough black comedy and forceful staging to reward a patient viewer. Its 170 minutes also contain too much repetition, and its people often struggle to matter as much as its spectacle.
Emir Kusturica’s Underground asks how people live with political lies, and how readily they help to keep them going. It approaches decades of Yugoslavian history through war, black comedy and absurdity, with little interest in behaving like a sober historical account. We recommend it cautiously, for the humour and the elaborate staging rather than any particular clarity about the history. At 170 minutes, it asks for more patience than its story always earns.
The screenplay by Dušan Kovačević and Kusturica is strongest in its black-comic subplots, where deceit produces situations worth watching rather than merely condemning. Slapstick gives the film a useful way of making heroic behaviour look ridiculous. We laughed at the broad physical comedy, then grew weary of how insistently the film returned to the same pitch. A joke can remain funny while the sequence containing it begins to drag, and that happens too often here.
Vilko Filač’s cinematography helps make the elaborately staged action absorbing even when the wider story is difficult to follow. There is pleasure in watching so much activity organised within an image, and Kusturica has the confidence to sustain these crowded passages. Miljen ‘Kreka’ Kljaković’s production design supports the action on a scale that suits the director’s appetite for excess. The trouble comes when looking at everything becomes more rewarding than following what anyone is doing, which is a recurring problem rather than an occasional distraction.
Branka Čeperac’s editing faces the difficult task of managing that much incident across a long running time. Individual passages have momentum, but their accumulation does not give the whole film a satisfying pace. Goran Bregović’s music suits the boisterousness, although its contribution is less helpful when we need some distance from the commotion. There are stretches when another surge of energy is precisely what the film does not need, and the editing gives us too little relief between them.
The cruel jokes make human weakness recognisable, and their ugliness sometimes makes the suffering harder to dismiss. Those moments give the comedy a seriousness that its noisy delivery can initially disguise. Elsewhere, the people become difficult to care about because they are being pushed through so much exaggerated behaviour. Kovačević and Kusturica keep political delusion in view more reliably than they sustain our interest in the individuals caught up in it.
War comedy does not owe us good taste, and we would not want this one tidied into respectable solemnity. Kusturica’s willingness to risk being abrasive is part of what makes the film worth considering, particularly when the humour makes heroism look foolish. What we want is a sharper sense of when a joke has done its work and when a person needs something beyond another grotesque flourish. Several of the longer passages would benefit from stopping before their energy turns into repetition.
Give Underground an evening of its own rather than trying to fit it around something else. The caveat is not simply its length: an appetite for unruly comedy matters more than a willingness to sit still. If the attraction is a clear account of Yugoslavian history, choose another film.
Most critics like Underground, and the praise gathers around the same things: the scale and energy of Kusturica’s staging, the circus-like set-pieces, and the way lowbrow slapstick sits beside an allegory about Yugoslavia’s political self-deception. Several describe it as sprawling and feverish, a comedy with real pain underneath, and more than one singles out the final sequence as the point where the humour and the sorrow finally meet.
The reservations cluster around length and purpose. Even admirers concede that three hours leave the viewer worn out, and the sceptics go further. Empire finds it rambling and increasingly hard to follow after a strong opening, Time Out cannot work out what the allegory is for, and The Independent calls it wilful and short on feeling for its people. The spread is wide, from wholehearted enthusiasm to outright irritation, and the sharpest dissent comes largely from the British press.
The critic finds it a sprawling, rowdy, vital film laced with outrageous absurdist dark humor and unspeakable pain, a dazzling epic allegory that sustains passion and sorrow across decades of Yugoslavian history.
Read the full review →The critic hails the film as the most important of the last 25 years and a sweltering, morally inquisitive work of political fiction that laments humanity’s propensity for self-destruction. He singles out its deliriously metaphorical blend of lowbrow slapstick, sophisticated war commentary, and magical realist elements for particular praise.
Read the full review →The critic describes a wild, sprawling feverish whimsical allegory with a devastating central idea about political delusion and the fate of Yugoslavia, praising its robust tale, bursts of humor, and magnificent ending that melds tragedy with optimism.
Read the full review →The critic hails Kusturica’s film as his masterpiece, a hallucinogenic comic romp through Yugoslavia’s troubled history. She singles out its surreal, circus-like portrayal of the repetitive insanity of conflict for particular note.
Read the full review →The critic calls it a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted but mightily impressed, with energy and a condemnation of communism and war making it emotionally engaging at Cannes.
Read the full review →The critic calls the film a bizarre, often repellent anti-war parable that takes too long to state the obvious but hits scattered high notes along the way. He singles out the surreal atmosphere and Lubitsch-like black comedy subplots for praise while criticizing the shrill tone, annoying characters, and excessive length.
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The Tin DrumAnother unruly wartime satire, with grotesque comedy and an awkward historical conscience.
The Firemen's Ball · not reviewed yetA smaller, drier political farce in which collective incompetence becomes painfully funny.
To Be or Not to BeActors confront wartime danger through deception, with far tighter control of the farce.
Songs from the Second Floor · not reviewed yetFor more surreal social despair, delivered through stillness rather than constant commotion.
The Death of StalinPolitical terror and personal vanity make vicious comedy, without the sprawling running time.
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