Goran Gocic The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground - Book Review Metro Magazine
By Kylie Boltin
Wallflower Press, London & New York, 2001. In The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground, Balkan film critic and journalist Goran Gocic has produced the first in depth English-language examination of the noted Serbian director. The book, released as part of the new 'Director's Cuts' series from Wallflower Press, is both accessible and detailed, and provides a multi-faceted, highly appreciative interrogation of the dual Palme D'Or award-winning director. In the words of the writer himself, 'everything plus the kitchen sink' might be an appropriate formula to assess the film-maker's carnivalesque, hallucinatory world, and it is in this spirit that this study has been written. The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground is divided thematically rather than chronologically. Gocic effectively utilizes a theoretical technique of 'wandering' to provide an avid portrait of Kusturica that privileges a historical foundation of the context from which his work stems. Traversing the familiar and the unfamiliar and using 'eastern' specificities mixed with western philosophies and filmreadings, Gocic provides a detailed and masterful analysis of the seven-and-a-half films that constitute Kusturica's film history: the made for Sarajevo television drama Buffet Titanic (1979), his debut feature Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981), When Father Was Away (1985), Time of the Gypsies (1988), his first 'American' film Arizona Dream (1993), Underground (1995), the highly comical and anarchic Black Cat, White Cat (1998) and Super 8 Stories (2001). Throughout The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground Gocic paints a bold portrait of Kusturica as a dynamic, highly creative, anti-hegemonic, pleasure-seeking character. We learn, to use Kusturica's own words: 'I am a Slav--in my contractions, in my affinity to a black-and-white world view, in my humour, and in my quick change of moods--as well as my understanding of history.' Gocic provides a foundational chapter that explores much of Kusturica's biography; a personal history which influences many of the political, cultural and cinematic concerns of the film-maker. This biographical examination works in conjunction with Gocic's intimate knowledge of Balkan specificities.
Gocic declares that at least half of Kusturica's films are overtly political and the politics of the national provide fundamental motifs for the Serbian film-maker. At the same time however Gocic makes it clear that politics do not immediately translate to detailed 'readings' of this cinema as was the attempt by critics across the globe following the success of Underground at Cannes. Gocic's analysis of the public dialogue during this time, which includes examinations of media responses throughout (the former) Yugoslavia, Western Europe and the United States is extensive and serves to highlight, in a clear and ordered fashion, the contentious nature and passionate effects of much of Kusturica's oeuvre. Emir Kusturica is the youngest and last of the successful Yugoslav directors to graduate from the prestigious FAMU Film Academy in Prague which counts Milos Foreman, Jan Nemec and other directors of the Czech New Wave among its exstudents. Within Gocic's examination, the specific aesthetic influences of this 'school' and other Slav artisans continues to dominate Kusturica's film-making, with particular attention to Yugloslav 'naive' art as the most 'recognisable fine art influence in Kusturica's work'. At the same time comparisons with other film-makers such as Goran Paskaljevic, Zivojin Pavlovic, Tony Gatlif, Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky are rife within Gocic's text. Although classifications are indeed avoided by Gocic he does term Kusturica's work as 'ethno' and positions Kusturica in the historical company of the Indian film-maker Satyajit Ray and Japan's Akira Kurosawa. Within this perspective Kusturica is positioned on the crest of the contemporary global trend of ethnicity which includes writers such as South American magical realist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat; artists whose means of expression 'are not "local"--what are local are the motifs'. A strong resonance throughout The Cinema of Emir Kusturica is Gocic's masterful employment of a specifically 'Balkan' perspective of certain elements in Kusturica's work. His examination of sevdah, defined by Gocic as a musical genre, with sevdalinka being a popular Bosnian song from the times of the Turkish rule, of particular interest. As Gocic writes, 'the "culturally-specific" element is that one's approval of the music has to be expressed in an emphatic way'. Music is a vital element of Kusturica's films which are often referred to in the west as 'all-singing, all dancing films'. Gocic's reading of sevdah serves to unpack and contextualize the recurring 'exaltations' displayed by various characters in Kusturica's cinema. Sevdah, Gocic writes, is the mode of expression for Slavic subjects by which the internal pain and sadness is expressed to the outside world.
The chaotic scenes of sevdah mark all of Kusturica's work, including his American cross-over film Arizona Dream. As articulated by Gocic: The natives enjoy the music in a unique way (sevdah): they enjoy orgiastic, Dionysiac, embarrassingly unrestrained celebrations (the cult of the wedding), they have insights into the supernatural and follow ancient superstitions in such earnestness that it seems they really work for them. The taste, the sound, the feel, the touch of rawness--all make up a whirlpool of local mystique, forgotten customs, and secret pleasures that Kusturica's heroes experience and which he exploits on a large scale. (p. 84) Gocic's informed multi-textual analysis helps us to understand the often unfathomable and anarchic aspects of Kusturica's films. We learn that Kusturica privileges a sense of joissance and/or pleasure to frame the raw emotion and energy of the many 'marginal' protagonists that define his cinema. Jouissance, defined by Gocic as 'a basically irrational ingredient which is also unconsciously perceived' (p.169) is for the author the most important key to Kusturica's work. It is this often intangible element, combined with his own extensive life experience, that marks his films as both 'other' to mainstream features and distinct within their own right. It is this underlying irrationality that makes Kusturica's often handicapped and highly marginalized characters appealing. It is their abstractness combined with their culturally specific modes of expression that forms the centre of Kusturica's appeal and the 'organic ingredient' of his work. Readers of The Cinema of Emir Kusturica are provided with a clear picture of many of the major themes and interests within Kusturica's filmography. Readers are concurrently guided masterfully between both Kusturica's own creative sites and adjacent fine art and cultural movements. Like all good academic film-texts, the cinematic details of the book are exacting and the theorisations specific. Yet Gocic's interest in the conceptual nature of Kusturica's work, his notion of play, the marginal and jouissance are central components of the text and are reflected in the style of the book. The result of which is a pleasurable journey based on informed foundations and passion. Kylie Boltin is a freelance writer and postgraduate student at the University of Melbourne. COPYRIGHT 2003 Australian Teachers of Media COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group