Directed by Emir Kusturica, written by Dusan Kovacevic and Emir Kusturica, starring Miki Monojlovic, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic, Slavko Stimac, Ernst Stotzner, Srdan Todorovic, Mirjana Karanovic, Milena Pavlovic, Bata Stojkovic, Bora Todorovic, Dr. Nele Karajlic, Branislav Lecic, Dragan Nikolic, Erol Kadic, Predrag Zagorac.
subUrbia
Directed by Richard Linklater, written by Eric Bogosian, starring Jace Bartok, Amie Carey, Nicky Katt, Ajay Naidu, Parker Posey, Giovanni Ribisi, Samia Shoaib, Dina Spybey, Steve Zahn.
Trap: Wow. I feel like I’ve been to hell twice today—from the raging inferno of Bosnia to the banal purgatory of anysuburb, USA -- and amazing thing is I feel totally exhilarated by the experience…
Bluesy: Man oh Man, I couldn’t agree with you more. What a damn good way to end this festival experience. One very good film, subUrbia, and one instant classic, Underground.
Now, Trap. I know what you’re gonna say… I hate that term “instant classic” too. It always seems uncomfortably like instant coffee to me, and you know how much I hate that -- but Underground really has to be one of the most complete, remarkable, moving, funny, enjoyable rides I’ve taken in the cinema in years. The experience was like eating NY pizza with Dom Perignon to chase it down. I’m “almost” speechless.
Trap: I know what you mean – after all, a classic is supposed to be something that has stood the test of time, right? However in this case, though, I’m pretty certain Underground will. Easily the best film in the festival (it won the Palm d’Or at Cannes last year) – it’s an epic black comedy spanning five decades of Yugoslavian history, whose tone is set in its very first scene – a pair of drunken revelers driving a horse-drawn carriage through the streets of Belgrade, yelling their heads off and shooting off pistols as a brass band runs along behind them playing a wild dance tune (if you’ve never heard Serbian dance music, try imagining what would have resulted if New Orleans had been a port on the Adriatic Sea). Later, the Nazis invade and the two men, Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and Petar or “Blacky” as he’s called throughout (Lazar Ristovski) join the resistance, then fall in love with the same woman, Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic), an actress who’s also the mistress of the local German commandant. A series of mishaps lead to Marko hiding Blacky and a group of other partisans in a basement storeroom under his house, then in order to keep Natalija for himself, not telling them when the war ends. Twenty years pass, with Blacky and the partisans living below ground, raising families and manufacturing weapons for (they think) the Resistance, while Marko, now an official in the Tito government, grows rich selling them on the black market. Marko tries to keep his captives in the dark, but obviously this situation can’t last. And it doesn’t.
Now, obviously this is meant as a metaphor for contemporary Bosnia, showing how the hostilities of the prewar period were merely pushed "underground" by the cold war and once that had ended, they resurfaced even more out of control than ever before. What makes Underground such a unique and important film is that director Emir Kusturica handles this with a complete lack of didacticism – instead using off hand surrealism, absurdist humor and outright slapstick – I’m hard pressed to think of any film since Dr. Strangelove that pushed the envelope of comedy quite so far. It’s as though he’s acknowledged that the history of his country is so tragic that the only way to deal with it is by laughing at it.
Bluesy: Maybe Terry Gilliam has a similar sense of the absurd going in something like Brazil… but then again, you had echos of Zazi Dans Le Metro and The Marx brothers thrown in. All right, I’m grasping for a comparison, but really there is none that quit fits. It’s as if Kusturica has defined a genre of his own with this film. Socio-Political-Surreal-Slapstick… in an epic setting. Aw hell, just go see it. I can’t imagine anyone not getting something out of this film… and it was so damn funny. I can’t believe I laughed out loud so much at death and destruction. God, I was manipulated in that film and God, I loved every minute of it. I still hear that music in my head, it just won’t go away.
Trap: Yeah, me too – it was such an integral part of the film’s sensibility that it now seems permanently etched into my synapses. I loved the way Kusturica used the band as a sort of Greek chorus, and the way that even the film’s grimmest moments would suddenly erupt into wild, drunken parties.
Which brings us, I guess, to Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play, subUrbia. I don’t want to compare the two films, since it’s hardly fair to stack up the more modest ambitions of this much more low-key and naturalistic work against the scope and bravura of Kusturica’s masterpiece, so I’ll just say it’s a vision of hell much more comprehensible to the average American – certainly to me, since I found it a pretty accurate portrait of the horrors of suburban living. In it a bunch of twentysomethings hang out in front of the local convenience store, getting drunk, gabbing, engaging in pointless displays of macho bravado, complaining that there’s nothing to do, and so on. Although shot in Linklater’s native Austin, it could just as easily been the small town in Rhode Island where I grew up.
Bluesy: Funny, I could swear it was set in Agoura, California. I think every person who grew up in subUrbia will recognize life ebbing away at the corner 7-11. What I really liked most about subUrbia, was how it took stereotypes of kids turning 20, facing that bridge into adulthood and wanting to jump over the side rather than actually do something with their lives; only to explore it with a peculiar fastidiousness and an eye for detail and dialect that made them practically into modern day Hamlets instead of “Spicoli’s” from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This is especially interesting since it was written by Eric Bogosian, based on his play… who is certainly way past 20-something. I know Linklater has had an ear and an eye on this generation from Slacker and Dazed and Confused, but paired with Bogosian’s penchant for dramatic speeches and well developed characters… I’d say these two were the perfect team to deliver a movie like this, and neither left any room for disappointment.
The kids in subUrbia are fucked up, drunk and misunderstood, just like the James Deans from the 50’s, or all those 60’s flicks like Goodbye Columbus – but they’ve got the unique perspective of having gone to high school in the Reagan era, full of trickle down politics, daddys bought porsches for the “upper-middle class,” the “lower-middle” driven to prospects of joining the air-force or putting off the inevitabilities of the business world by going to community college. It’s a class struggle, just like it’s always been… but I think this film shows that young adults today are more aware of what awaits them in their future, and because of this, no matter what income bracket their parents are in, they’re scared as hell to become a part of it. Then again, “the arts” are shown in subUrbia as a ticket out. Whether it’s the nebbishy Jewish kid turned limo-riding rock star, or Buff, the zoned out kid who thinks he can maybe make a video to get out, or Amie Carey’s “Sooze” showing off her performance art piece with particular relish to her friends, claiming this is her ticket to a better life, as she proclaims from the beginning she’s going to go to NY and make something of her talents… even if she doesn’t have much of any (but she does have enthusiasm. I haven’t seen such energy in a number on film since Rosie Perez did her stuff in Do The Right Thing.) Even the cynical narrator, Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi as, what I’m assuming is the Bogosian alter-ego) claims at some point that maybe writing is his ticket out. I guess anything to be different than your folks is a good thing, but what would these kids do if their parents were in the entertainment industry? Take up economics and move to… the suburbs?
Trap: Not likely, I imagine, since the film pretty much depicts the suburbs as a place to get the hell out of as fast as possible – I mean, even the Pakistani convenience store owner talks about finishing his engineering degree and going somewhere where he won’t have to deal with drunken, obnoxious kids spitting racist insults at him – but since that’s pretty much how I thought of them when I lived there, I could certainly sympathize. And after all, for all their aimlessness and despair, you can still see them groping toward some sense of purpose, even if it’s something as trivial as doing album covers. Bogosian doesn’t condescend to the kids (in fact, he admitted at the press conference afterward that he was once one of them), and although he flirts with melodrama a couple of times (I don’t want to give anything away, but just remember what Chekhov said about a gun in the first act of a play having to go off by the third), and although the ending is indeed downbeat, he nevertheless restrains himself, leaving his characters – and the audience – a little room for hope.
Bluesy: So, all in all, today’s offerings were really the perfect cap off to a fine festival. I hope both subUrbia and Underground get a large audience, because these are the kinds of independent films that really give hope to the whole movie industry.
And on that note, I want to remind everyone that we’ll both be back here next week with some new movie releases. Some big budget studio releases too… nobody’s gonna accuse US of being elitists, are they, Trap? Trap?
Trap: Huh? Elitists? Nous? Certainement pas!
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