Underground (1995)

There's a scene in Underground where a tank drives through a wedding. That image pretty much tells you everything you need to know about what Emir Kusturica is doing here. It's absurd, it's chaotic, it's oddly funny, and somewhere underneath all the noise there's a real cry of grief. That's the film in a nutshell: a massive, sprawling, exhausting, brilliant, maddening experience that I'm genuinely glad I watched and never want to sit through again in a hurry.

The setup is the kind of premise that sounds like it was written during a fever. Two conmen and arms dealers convince their entire village to hide in a bomb shelter, keeping the war going in their minds long after it's ended above ground. For a good stretch, Kusturica runs with this and runs hard. The first half is outrageously inventive, a whirlwind of slapstick, sharp satire, surrealist touches, and folk music that hammers away at you like a brass band that's had one too many. It's the kind of filmmaking that grabs you by the collar. You're swept along whether you like it or not.

But then the tone shifts, and it shifts hard. That feverish, almost celebratory energy begins to curdle. What started as a madcap farce quietly becomes something much darker, exposing the lies, the betrayals, and the open wounds of a country tearing itself apart. The comedy doesn't disappear, but it starts to feel heavier. There's real anger buried in this film, and moments of genuine sorrow that hit you sideways when you're not expecting them. The swooping camera, the surrealism, the relentless music, all of it starts to carry a different weight. It's quite an achievement to pull off that kind of tonal shift without losing the thread entirely, and Kusturica mostly manages it, even if the seam shows.

My issue is the length. Nearly three hours of this much manic energy and layered symbolism is a lot to ask. By the time we're deep into the third act, the film starts to feel like it's circling the same ground, as though it doesn't quite know how to let go of the party. Some of the broader comedy starts to grate when you can feel the full weight of history pressing down on proceedings. It wants to be both a wake and a carnival at the same time, and there are stretches where that contradiction works magnificently, and stretches where it just wears you out.

What keeps it alive, even when it's testing your patience, is that the filmmaking is genuinely bold. Kusturica isn't interested in anything small or tidy. The ambition here is enormous, the symbolism is overloaded by design, and the film carries a fury about Yugoslavia's collapse that no straightforward historical drama could have expressed the same way. It reminded me a little of Aferim! in how it uses a kind of savage, darkly comic energy to reckon with national history, though Kusturica is operating on a much more operatic scale.

Messy, flawed, frequently exhausting and genuinely unforgettable. That's the most honest verdict I can give it. There are moments of real genius scattered through this film, images and sequences that'll stick with you long after the credits roll. But it earns those moments at a cost, and the cost is your full attention and a fair chunk of your evening. Worth it? Just about, yes. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel relieved when it was over.

Three and a half stars.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-09-02

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

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