I consider myself woefully inadequate to describe something like ‘Underground’. Let me first simply try to cough up an introduction. ‘Underground’ is a film by Emir Kusturica (pronounced rit-sa), from Serbia, that released in 1995. It is a story of two friends, Marko and Blacky and a few people around them, most notably Natalija, the girl wedged between the two friends. Nothing extraordinary, except the story starts in Yugoslavia in the year 1941.
The Axis powers have marched into Yugoslavia after bombing its various cities relentlessly. Against this backdrop, the story of these three characters is played out with the momentum of a hurled sandbag. The two friends are both members of the local Communist party which is just an excuse for them to indulge in looting and carrying out acts of anarchy. It also brings them into conflict with the ‘f***ing fascist mother*******’ (as Blacky calls them). Blacky, who resembles a pit-bull, both in physique and demeanour, is a man consumed by lust for war and revolution. Marko, more delicate and cunning, is a sensualist, who, as we see in an early scene, is quite literally turned on by the sound of bombs blowing his own city to bits.
Blacky has a shrew for a wife, Vera. She is pregnant, almost due. Blacky couldn’t care less for her; his considerable affections lie with a theatre actress Natalija, who, in turn, courts a hungry German admirer Franz, of the Gestapo that has recently taken command of the country. Oh yeah, and there’s also Marko’s stammering, naive, young brother Ivan, who runs a zoo, complete with a lion, a tiger ,an elephant and, most importantly, a chimp named Soni.
Only Soni sticks to Ivan after the bombing; the rest of the animals are either killed or run wild. They tag along with Marko after their houses have been destroyed. Also in the entourage are Vera and a few other relatives and friends. Marko’s wife has left him, presumably because of his whoring ways. They hide out in the basement of a distant relative of Marko, a Communist partisan. Blacky, meanwhile proceeds to “rescue” Natalija, from the clutches of “ze Germans”. In this process, he is captured, tortured and nearly killed, and is rescued, rather unlikely, by Marko.
Marko, then proceeds to put Blacky and his remaining family (Vera dies in childbirth, leaving him a son) in the same basement. Marko lets Blacky believe that Natalija is held captive with the fascists, while he sweeps her off her feet, with his silken tongue and promise of power.
So they continue, for twenty years, after the end of the World War, into the Cold War days. During this time, Marko has continuously kept them in the basement, letting them think it is still war. To reinforce the belief, he keeps playing a recorded alarm, jingoistic manifestos and sounds of bombs intermittently. The people “underground” manufacture arms in preparation for the great war that they believe continues, awaiting Marko’s orders. Marko, meanwhile, takes those arms and sells them for obscene amounts of money.
The story looks unbelievable on paper, and even more so, on screen. Kusturica has some extremely strong points to make, and I doubt he could have made them more strongly. It is difficult to describe the movie. It has scenes of such dazzling, absurd ingenuity that we are exhilarated even as we question our own sanity in appreciating it. It is a satire in the sense that it laughs savagely at its characters and makes us laugh with it, while hauling them over the coals. It is an epic in that it spans over fifty years, several events and characters, revealing countless emotions and moods. It is political, without taking sides. It is an allegory because every character represents something broader in the real world. It has scenes of war, of destruction of both a nation and its people.
Each individual scene is a miniature of the whole film, in that sense. Towards the middle, when we are familiar with the setting and backgrounds of the characters, each scene makes us laugh, feel sick, angry and plain weird, all at the same time.
The mise-en-scene is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen. It is chaotic; that’s the first impression one gets. Things seem to happen on screen of their own accord, there is no deliberation, no external control over them. Yet, they play out in perfect rhythm, precariously balanced, yet unfailingly steering away from caricature. It is self-organising behaviour, incarnate. The people on screen verily seem to dance, or sway to some music, unheard by us, the viewers, and yet we can very well see they are not dancing. Neither does it look choreographed. It is the underlying order of anarchy. The camera moves too. It is not static, as if it is some passive bystander observing the madness with bemused detachment. Yet, it remains level-eyed and doesn’t spin out of control, as it is surrounded by the madness.
The film would have had about half the effect, were it not for its music. Most of it is shown to be played by the omnipresent brass band and it is just as such: shrill, cacophonous, unruly, yet managing to render a song or a tune accurately enough for people to revel in. There is ample use of folk music along with a few songs of national fervour to repeated sardonic effect.
Explaining the subtext of this film would defeat its very purpose. Even though, it is set in a very specific place and period of world history, (which I admit is not the most widely known), I feel it is universal. It only makes it all the more important to be seen. One need not educate oneself specially about the history of Yugoslavia since World War II to understand or fully experience this film. In fact, it is better experienced ‘cold’ as they say. It is a measure of its power that the film made me read up the history of Yugoslavia during the Cold War and after it. After reading the actual history, my admiration for the film simply grew.
Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are three splinters of the original Yugoslavia, a country that has suffered unspeakable violence over several years. As I learn from the three movies that I’ve seen from those lands, it is such violence that can be understood only if it is felt, not even imagined, by most outsiders. All three films vary widely in content and tone. One is, of course, ‘Underground’. The others are Danis Tanovic’s ‘No Man’s Land’ and Srdjan Spasojevic’s ‘A Serbian Film’.
All three films try to encapsulate an idea of what it is like to be surrounded by such violence. By violence, I don’t just mean physical violence, but all forms of it. ‘A Serbian Film’ tries to present a visceral and literal account of such violence in its unflinching depiction of....well.... the unspeakable. Watching it would make one literally sick, I suppose, but that is the purpose.
‘No Man’s Land’ tries to present how frustratingly complex a seemingly simple problem can be. Its simplicity knocked the wind out of me. It simply takes two men in a deadlock, lying in the middle of a war, with a mine under one of them in a ditch, that belongs to no country, and hence, paradoxically, to every country and watches as they are strangled by nothing but international relations and talks and their own jangled nerves.
What does ‘Underground’ try to present to us? I feel it tries to convey a sense of absurdity and incongruity caused by monstrous betrayal, the perverse humour of bearing unendurable pain. There is a scene that perfectly mirrors this: Marko, after coaxing Natalija to lie to Blacky that she had been tortured for years in a German camp, is attending the wedding of Blacky’s son Jovan. All of them are still in the basement. Blacky is overjoyed to find his long-lost love just before his son’s wedding. Marko plays the gallant friend who rescues Natalija from the camps, to perfection.
Even though she has been seduced by Marko for twenty years, and has casually, passively connived to keep Blacky and many others underground for 20 years, she is disgusted at having to lie to their faces. Most of all, she is disgusted at how easily Marko continues to lie. In drunken abandon, she climbs atop a tank (built wholly underground by Blacky and his comrades) and straddles its ten foot long gun with orgasmic bliss. Later, sitting at a table beside Marko, she drinks glass after glass of brandy and gin. Marko tries to stop her, but she replies that she cannot bear to look at him while sober. All this while, she is dancing in her seat, her face twisted into ecstatic glee at the music. Marko, too, seems to enjoy himself fully. They segue into cursing each other and each other’s parents venomously, all the while swaying and swinging to the rambunctious music. In an earlier scene, as Marko first courts Natalija, she almost swoons into his arms whispering “Marko, you lie so beautifully”, as they proceed to make love even as the ceiling plaster crumbles down onto them at the sound of bombs (this time by the Allies). The film overflows with such scenes and even more.
For some weird reason, this movie evoked a memory long buried in my mind. As it came back fully, I relished the memory more than ever before. It was one of the cartoons that were shown along with the Mickey and Donald series, the Silly Symphony ones. It was an unusual one because it featured Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie and all the usual Silly Symphony characters like the cows, pigs and other barn animals. It showed Mickey as the conductor of a barn symphony featuring all the barn animals and Donald as an ice-cream seller who happens to come by when they are playing a piece. Towards the end, there is a typhoon, a literal whirlwind that comes and blows them all away. Everyone sees it coming, except Mickey who continues conducting. The symphony continues to play perfectly even as they are being blown around in the storm. It was an outrageously funny piece, the sight of an uncommonly grim Mickey vehemently conducting the terrorised barn animals into hitting the perfect note, even as they are blown head over heels into the eye of the storm.
Such is Kusturica's skill, that as the three drunk “friends”, Marko, Blacky and Natalija sing, with their heads in a tight circle,
“Is it moonlight at noon?
Is it sunshine at midnight?
From the skies above, light is beaming
Nobody knows, nobody knows
What is really shining.”,
we understand them perfectly.
