Life is a Miracle

aka: Zivot je cudo
Serbia / France 2004, 149 minutes
Dir. Emir Kusturica
In Serbo-Croatian, German, Hungarian with English subtitles
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Drama, Comedy / War

Feat. Slavko Stimac, Natasa Solak

Aroview: Another feverish, frenetic and heartfelt vision from Balkan dir. Emir Kusturica (UNDERGOUND), attempting here to fathom and unknot the bloody Bosnian conflict of the 1990s with his magical realist wand.

Set amid the coming of a railway to a small rural Bosnian town, its wide canvas of characters are thrown into disarray with the outbreak of hostilities between neighbouring Serbia and among the town's citizens. The main story concerns a Serbian railway engineer (Stimac) who falls in love with a Muslim hostage he is supposed to be swapping for his imprisoned son, but this is surrounded with an array of chaotic bear hunts, soccer matches, shoot-outs and organised criminal endeavours.

With Kusturica's customary penchant for busy brass-band music also present, this threatens to tumble into incoherence, and while hardly an acute geopolitical analysis, has enough tragicomic spectacle to poignantly evoke the messy emotions and images of civil war.