Along the Milky Way: War and the Emir
It has been ten years since Emir Kusturica released his last full-length feature film, The Testament. I let it out and ... disappeared. He did not completely disappear - he toured with The No Smoking Orchestra, filmed and led an active social life. But he didn’t make a movie. Along the Milky Way is the director's first feature film in many years. Someone during this time could be completely disqualified, while someone, on the contrary, could prove that time has no power over talent. The drama Along the Milky Way helps resolve this dilemma unilaterally."This film combines three true stories and a lot of wild fantasy",- said about his brainchild Emir .90s. Civil war in Bosnia. Costa ( Kusturica ) is a former soldier who once saw the death of a loved one with his own eyes. Since then, he has developed minor mental disorders. He lives deep within himself, moves around without paying attention to bullets, drives milk every day and takes care of his donkey more than of himself. Once on his life path he meets She (Monica Bellucci). She is the ex-wife of an English general who fled from him to another country. The hardships that befell her in the past also turned out to be too difficult for the psyche, so the woman remembers almost nothing of what happened before. Against the backdrop of the war, these two seem to have found peace. Fragile and very disturbing, but still peace. However, fate has its own view of their relationship ...  The first scene of a film is always the most accurate answer to the question "What will the movie be about?" With this episode, the authors, on the one hand, put themselves in a certain framework, on the other, they untie their hands. And " The Milky Way " opens not a soldier's anecdote, but the slaughter of a boar ... Throughout the first half of the film, Emir Kusturica (both in the frame and behind the scenes) willy-nilly evokes in the audience smile. Either there will be a break on the battlefield, and the soldiers will go to lunch, then the clock will refuse to show the exact time and will begin to injure the hands of everyone who wants to let them down. And the protagonist himself, hiding with an old umbrella from ricochets and explosions, looks, if not comical, then cutely absurd. Until the middle of the tape, the director carefully plunges the viewer into his world. The main character speaks little, smokes a lot and squints as only Kusturica can do. Much is hidden behind his silence - before us is a man who understands and remembers everything that he would prefer not to understand and forget. However, the director for the time being distracts the public's attention from the character with all sorts of images and events. He seems to be present in the frame, but his meaningful silence is so contrary to the general life-affirming mood that there is no need to think about him too much. However, when Kusturica makes you smile, he doesn't become a clown. On the contrary, the author makes every effort to make what is happening on the screen look lazy and sluggish, and the pun seemed very fragile.  When the story crosses the equator, the director throws off all feigned lightness and simplicity from it. In the foreground comes Emir Kusturica himself - a man who gives depth to a parable even to an ironic note. A person who, like any brilliant artist, thinks not in words, but in images. He manages to tell the story that is happening here and now, so that it is outside of time and space. A story about a mad milkman and a refugee from the past. It would seem, what could be more strange? But with his entire film Kusturica shows how the story of two lonely hearts, if not close, then certainly understandable to any viewer. Traditionally Emir saturates his tape with a large number of unambiguous images that add up to the overall picture of the world. There is a place for snakes that save, not bite, for a falcon that soars up and looks down on people, and a net for fish, which turns out to be not at all for her. The picture is not complete without a kind of curtsy to Kusturice of the 90s. Just one scene of the national holiday - emotional, with a Yugoslav flavor - and the feeling that the Underground was turned on for a while. A kind of hello to the past, those who are not familiar with the maestro's works will simply appreciate it, and the fans will probably appreciate it. By the way, the director even removes a kind of "feast during the plague" in such a way that he does not get out of the general atmosphere of the picture. In short, a genius.  However, Kusturica is a genius not only behind the scenes - this is already a kind of axiom. But for the first time he filmed and filmed - before the picture "On the Milky Way" the filmmaker was never"both a Swiss and a reaper"at the same time. A talented person is talented in everything: it is simply impossible to imagine someone else in the role of Costa . Emir endows him with weakness and charisma, spontaneity and intelligence. He is madly in love with his character and makes the viewer feel sympathy for him. As for the main character, after the first screenings, even a joke appeared - they say, Kusturica started this whole project just to kiss Monica Bellucci . In fact, everything is much more complicated ... It should be noted that two Monica appeared in the picture. The first is who the director sees her. This is a tired and already middle-aged woman who was afraid for too long and tried to escape from many things. The second, she appears before the eyes of the protagonist - beautiful, silent, looking for something good, in which you can still believe. And the actress coped with these two images perfectly. Despite the fact that the first glory came to her precisely because of her sexy appearance, time put everything in its place. Due to beauty and photogenicity, many quickly take off, but if external data prevails over acting, the fall will be as rapid as the takeoff. Signora Bellucci has been filmed for more than a quarter of a century, and the film Along the Milky Way once again demonstrates that she is not an accidental guest in cinema.  After watching the film, the question of whether it was worth waiting for ten years does not even arise. Such works of art always live, and no matter how much Kusturica prepares his next masterpiece, the public will wait for him with the same excitement. Along the Milky Way only once again confirmed the highest level of Emir as an artist and storyteller and earned a long standing ovation for the master. The Topic of Article: Along the Milky Way: War and the Emir. |
