Life Is a Miracle

But a good one anyway. Director Kusturica has already accustomed us with his caricatural way of telling stories occurring in several parts of former Yugoslavia presenting their characters as burlesque. He doesn't ridicule them, however. In fact he shows love and even some tenderness for them. He simply doesn't take life seriously and plays in a first class way with war, ethnic conflict, love and so on. But sentiment and emotion are not altogether absent of this movie. Behind the humorous scenes we can feel the depth of love that arises between the Serbian railway engineer and his supposed prisoner Muslim girl that he intends to exchange for his son who was captured by the Bosnian army during the Bosnian war of 1992. Some of the love scenes are full of humour but also of poetry and even fantasy like when their bed flies over the fields of Bosnia in some kind of dream. The first part of the movie is a quick succession of funny incidents and accidents. When the love story begins in the second part its pace is a bit more calm without losing completely its rapid rhythm. It's a movie that puts you on a happy frame of mind and don't forget the important role of the she-donkey which will make you laugh at several scenes. In the end the animal performs even an important part in the issue of the story that without its intervention would probably have a sad outcome.

It's a best movie I have seen during the last few years. After the film I had feeling that Hollywood is just a factory producing cheep colored jewelry. The film is a drama with happy end. In this movie you can find real feelings, real values. There is described the philosophy of war, how stupid and silly it can be. Kusturica's humor is sharp and true. The most funny for me in this film was a place with international "peacekeeping" organizations , there "role" in solving of conflicts, "saving" people. In fact the author shows how useless and inadequate are those organizations in such cases. Kusturica is a great as usual and the soundtrack like in all his films too.

This is the best Kusturica's film i have seen. I was very pleased and smiling when i got out of the cinema. It's is very nice to watch that, being always himself, the director was able to improve his style and understand the most powerful elements of each of his previous films, so this time he mixed the lightness and joy of "Crna macka, beli macor" (black cat white cat) with the seriousness and dramatic feelings of "underground".. plus a romance, which is truly explored for the first time in a Kusturica's film, and with high sensitivity i must say.

So, in this one the scenery is a typical Black cat, a almost wild village near the serbia - bosnia border, where a railroad is being built, in the middle of a feeling of pre war. Here we find the main character, this humble man with a (devily insane) wife and a son. Things move forward and he looses both when she escapes with some Hungarian and he goes to war where becomes a prisoner. Than we have the last important character showing up, Sabaha (performed by a dazzling Natasa Solak, truly beautiful). Around this context Kusturica builds a very intense psychological diary of the man, who has constantly to decide whether to save his son or stay with his love (you'll understand how when you get to watch the film), as well as to deal with his returning wife vs his new lover. Better to observe that in the film than to talk about it. Apart from that you get a lot of Kusturica elements and typical way of making laugh, such as through a mule who is constantly trying to commit suicide in the railroads or the fantastic scene in the football game. In opposition to this you have this scene where Luka (main character) desperately grabs his son foot ball and cries over it. Powerful. Mixing the beautiful Balcan's landscapes and the ambiguous, but typical and enjoyable "no smoking" soundtrack and never loosing the posture of portraying ex yugoslavia social environment (like in the references to Tito, ex dictator of the balcans), kusturica creates this romantic but also dramatic comedy, which is the most difficult thing to put in films, as far as i observe. You have in this one that strange laughing/crying effect you find in for instance La Vita e bella or in most of Chaplin's movies. You spend the movie laughing but suddenly you feel very sad, and disturbed and understand you saw something sensitive and great...

From time to time pace gets to slow and if the film was 15 min shorter it wouldn't be worst. Apart from that it's a powerful European creation. It's Kusturica for sure. 8/10

There is no film maker today to bring to screen the beauty and madness of the Balkans like Kusturica does. 'Life is a miracle' will be seen in time, I believe, as the ultimate film about the Bosnian war.

The main character Luka (played by Slavko Stimac) is a train engineer, building a railroad in a remote corner of Yugoslavia, near the Bosnian border. It's the end of the communist rule, and lingering ethnic conflicts start showing up and replace the patriarchal life. When war breaks, Luka's son will be drafted into the Serbian army and fall prisoner, while his wife runs out with a Hungarian singer. The conflict around that he tried to ignore by work, partying and booze invades his life. And still salvation is out there, the day a beautiful Bosnian prisoner (yet a neighbor of yesterday) shows up Luka will build a plan to make an exchange of prisoners between her and her son, but soon will fall in love.

Kusturica succeeds to paint in naive painters colors a world that slowly slides from normality into madness, where neighbors become enemies, and violence the rule. He is funny and exuberant, but his humor is the humor of the fool of the village, and his exuberance is the exuberance of desperation. As in many great movies it is love that redeems and brings back human feelings to where they should be. Kusturica builds a world of characters who are tragic and funny, colorful and overall avid to live a life despite of the vicissitudes of history.

Wonderful.

Talented forward Milos Djukic dreams of playing for Partizan Belgrado. But his dream shatters when the war between the Serbians and Bosnians escalates. He gets drafted by the Serbian army and must report for duty. Disaster strikes when he gets captures. The only way to free him is to trade him for a Bosnian nurse who's held captive at his fathers house.

The least i can say about this movie is that is surprised me. Surprised by its drama, comedy, romance, absurdity.. Yes, this movie has it all. It combines all genres in a terrific mixture which interested me from the beginning until the end. Which is not an easy thing to do considering that this movie lasts two and a half hours. It gets along quite smoothly without real twists in the plot or having to accelerate 'cause there isn't a real climax this movie strives to (accept the obvious one, but thats not what this movie is really about).

Don't expect to get blown away by this picture, it wont knock your socks off. It'll give you a nice, subtle, smooth ride for your money.

8/10