Maratonci trce pocasni krug

It is a pity that in spite of it's greatness, the movie is very sensitive to translation ... of language and socio-political environment.

In the magic of the Yugoslav eighties, this film was like something you will never have seen before. The sense of humor those guys had is incredible, comparable only to greatness like Mark Twain, Jaroslav Hasek, Monty Python, in their best years.

Please do also see "Ko to tamo peva" (from two years earlier, same scriptwriter&director).

And remember, if at first you don't succeed.. do yourself a big favor and watch the movie again. Then if you still don't like it, do yourself a bigger favor still and go see 'Airplane II'(also same script,writer&director..) and forget about Serbian comedy.

10/10

This is probably the best film in in serbian cinematography, so far. As a matter of fact Yugoslavian Film Academy ranked it number one in the first century of film. Since it was released it has become the definitive cult movie in Serbia. The cast is great, many of highly respected serbian actors took part in the movie. The script is great, and some lines are hilarious (such as Billy Piton's). The script is based on well-known play by Dusan Kovacevic.

With no hard feelings, because there are many great films in the history, but this one should be absolute No.1 Although I regret almost everyday for I was born in this part of Europe, I am blessed to be a native speaker, so I can enjoy movies like this completely. I watched this masterpiece more than 300 times. Characters from this movie are the true heroes in all ex-Yu countries, scenes and comments from this movie you can see in everyday life, on TV, hear on radio stations, because each and every sentence from this movie became legendary. Thanks to all the legends who made this movie, hope they rest in peace, cause unfortunately most of them passed away.... I am not sure when we will have a bunch of such extraordinary actors again...

There is a set of movies that leaves me absolutely speechless, actually to be more precise, unable to find superlatives to describe their true genius. It's the case of Wong Kar Wai's Fa Yeung Nin Wa or Ron Fricke's Baraka or Theo Angelopoulos' Eternity and a Day. Those films have absolutely nothing in common as related to topic, genre or style yet they represent lonely peaks in a desert of movies that can not raise up to their stature. It's one of those movies that keeps you breathlessly clinged up to the end, and I am not talking about suspense. When it is over, you will exclaim: "I've never seen anything like it". Even viewed for the tenth time, "the marathon family" will produce a breeze of freshness, exquisite humour(that western people usually don't appreciate...) and astonishment. The metaphor reveals itself towards the end, in an accelerated rhythm - war between brothers and the fall of a nation, also lamented by Kusturica in Underground in a similar humourish yet bitter fashion. I give it a definite ten (10). Chapeau Bas!!!

The Serbs say this is the best Serbian film ever made, which I think underestimates it -- it may be the best film anyone made in the 1980s. Released in 1982, when Yugoslavia was a functioning state, rather than international shorthand for murder and genocide, it casts a baleful look backward that becomes, in the light of all the subsequent blood, almost unbearably poignant and prophetic. It would be too much if it weren't constantly, brutally laugh-out-loud funny -- funny even in subtitles, funny as slapstick and deeply classically comic at the same time.

It is set in the 1930s in a backwater small town in Serbia, where the Topalovic family has its funeral home.. Topalovic women "fade away like flowers" immediately after bearing a boy while the men live on and on -- creating the Marathon reference in the title. In an effervescent scene we meet six generations of Topalovic men, each one of whom mercilessly beats and bullies the younger ones. The film centers on the youngest, the tall and none-too-bright Mirko, lover of movies and Cristina, piano player at the town's movie house and daughter of the local gangster Billy Python, who supplies the Topalovic home with used coffins dug up and emptied of their previous occupants.

The action revolves around three events: the death of the very oldest Topalovic, the desire of Mirko's imbecilic, cowardly and conniving father Lucky to break up the Mirko-Cristina affair and -- and this is resoundingly delicious -- the arrival of sound film in the town, putting Cristina out of a job.

The writer, Dusan Kovacevic adapted the script from his own play, and director Slobodan Sijan gets an amazingly good ensemble cast of actors to run the machinery in high gear, flat out. It starts dark and gets darker with crematorium jokes ("the wave of the future"), vintage silent Yugoslav film commercials and clips, and slides, laughing more and more wildly, into violence that flies out of control The tie to what happened to Serbia only a few years later spins the movie up another level. That the tie is not accidental is underlined by the opening sequence -- newsreel footage of the assassination in France of the King of Serbia in the early 20s. The wonderful musical theme, raucous and melancholy at the same time is by Zoran Simjanovic. You don't know me, but do yourself a favor and see this one.