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Rating: Great player Dražen Petrović, but like all those who devote themselves to something with militaristic discipline, the rigidity of this strict discipline often spills over into the moral sphere, even if we are talking about the only one who managed to guard Michael Jordan.
And here comes propaganda with its brainwashing that infects logic, and discrimination makes its appearance. From being friends with Serbian companions, even roommates, the official national reasons shape the deeply ingrained cancer of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and overnight, the brotherly friend becomes the enemy. Damnably current issues in these times.
No doubt about it, we are all "good people" who, in the evening in front of the mirror, tell ourselves how good we were, full of good intentions, and if we have one flaw, it's that we are too good, at most we gnaw at our nails... Disgusting. But it would take so little to see that we are at the mercy of events, but the truth hurts (I know it does). Just to be right at all costs we mask atrocities with religion and ideologies: At sword's length! God wills it! Always tough! Only disasters...
And the aftermath of violence the film presents to us as absurd but true, as true as God. And the English black humor, manipulated by Jasmin Dizdar, revels in a cynical revisionism of itself, where the tight-lipped laughter is an inexorable sneer that horrorifies the "show must go on." And the fanfares, the least bitter Ottoman legacy, blow in the brass an unstoppable frenzy where the blinders of the rhythmic vortex pursue the target of life's mockery.
Kusturica cunningly epicized the ex-Yugoslav feud towards the end of "Underground," but the omelet is much more indigestible than a pseudo "amarcord" artistic affair: life is not made with life, Emir, and cinema is not made with cinema. Thankfully, things like "Powder Keg," "Before the Rain," "Eternity and a Day" and, why not, our local "Elvjs & Merilijn" go hand in hand in their rawness with the nettle soup shot in the land of Albion.
In that 1992, a centuries-old rancor of vendettas exploded with a fuse now shortened by external "diplomacies" that detonated hysterical death assisted by Balkan energies, raising by a Bel-grade the disturbances and madness of the untamed nature of that land.
Here in Bohemia, I have known and worked with various "children of Tito." I remember Bobo, a Macedonian, we worked together, few words, stolen smiles, tired eyes, extinguished. "How did it go for you when the war was on? We cleaned up the country..." he replied. Nothing else. Rade, from Skopje, is almost a brother to me, we've been through things together, except I came from the Italian reality and he, when the chaos began, fled to Prague with his whole family and a newborn baby. Other beginnings.
Other acquaintances, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian with the signs of those who want to forget what cannot be forgotten, with those chiseled features, with those faces of men already at twenty, like our grandparents. And when they knew I had been (in 1992, fancy that) in Petrič by Baba Vanga, the Bulgarian clairvoyant, sincerely moved, they took my hands, begging me to light a candle and say a little prayer for them.
And there I see "many enemies, much honor" being used, which many cowards use lightly, revealing insecurity and unconsciousness. These people do not remotely know that a war, especially an ethnic one, is an unspeakable horror. A long road ahead of us, a long one...
Hooligans inevitably redeemed; green cards that will no longer let you kill innocents; no more falling from the pear tree; efforts to abort rapes; addicted to the power of life, stripped of the hope of living; hitting friends-enemies out of desperation. All funny and terrible: Long live the newlyweds!
Life finally returns to normal... Normal?
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