Underground (1995)
★★★ — Underground (1995)
Some films announce themselves as events rather than mere releases, and Emir Kusturica's Underground (1995) is very much one of those. A co-production spanning Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Hungary, and distributed through the French studio CiBy 2000 alongside Pandora Film and Novofilm, the film arrived at a moment when the very country it depicts was tearing itself apart. Yugoslavia was dissolving in real time as Kusturica was making a film about its entire lifespan, from the German occupation of Belgrade in the Second World War through to the civil wars of the 1990s. That context is not incidental; it is the whole point. The tagline, "Once upon a time there was a country," says it plainly enough.
Kusturica was already an established name in world cinema by the mid-1990s, having won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for When Father Was Away on Business in 1985. Underground won him a second Palme d'Or, making him one of a very small group of directors to have achieved that twice. The film runs to a formidable 170 minutes, which is worth flagging before you settle in, and it takes as its starting point two black marketeers, Marko and Blacky, who exploit the chaos of wartime Belgrade to their own considerable advantage. One of them eventually seals an entire community underground in a bomb shelter, telling them the war is still ongoing, while he himself rises through the ranks of the Communist Party above ground. It is a premise that functions as both broad farce and national allegory, and Kusturica leans into both registers without much apology. If you have spent time with other ambitious dramas from world cinema, say the kind of long-form storytelling found in Edward Yang's Yi Yi or the emotionally loaded territory of Mustang, you will have some sense of the patience required, though Underground is a considerably noisier proposition than either.
The principal cast is led by Predrag 'Miki' Manojlović as the calculating Marko and Lazar Ristovski as the louder, more volatile Blacky, and the two work well as a double act, each man embodying a different kind of self-serving delusion. Mirjana Joković plays Natalija, the woman caught between them, and Slavko Štimac and Ernst Stötzner round out the key roles. The performances are pitched to match the film's register: broad when it needs to be broad, worn and exhausted when the material demands it. For those interested in what European cinema of this period was producing more widely, it is worth noting that 1995 also gave us films like Salaam Cinema, and the decade as a whole was a rich one for distinctive, uncompromising work, including Braveheart (1995) a couple of years later. Underground sits in that company: polished but exhausting, ambitious but wilfully difficult, the kind of film that does not especially care whether you find it comfortable.
A-Z World Movie Tour Underground Underground (1995) is a wild, chaotic, and often brilliant ride through decades of Yugoslav history, wrapped in absurdity, dark comedy, and raw human tragedy. Directed by Emir Kusturica, it’s a sprawling epic that starts with energy and invention (a mix of slapstick, satire, and surrealism) following two conmen turned arms dealers who hide their village in a bomb shelter for years, convincing them the war’s still on. The first half is outrageous, funny, and wildly inventive, with a feverish energy that’s hard not to get swept up in. But as it goes on, the tone shifts, hard. What begins as a madcap farce slowly curdles into something much darker, exposing the lies, betrayals, and national trauma behind the region’s collapse. There’s real anger here, and moments of genuine sorrow buried under the chaos. The filmmaking is bold and stylish, with sweeping camera moves, folk music, and surreal touches (like a tank driving through a wedding) that make it feel like a fever dream of a nation losing its mind. It did lose a little something by shifting tone so suddenly though. That said, it’s definitely too long. Nearly three hours of manic energy, shifting tones, and overloaded symbolism. By the end, it feels exhaustive, like it’s repeating itself just to keep the party going. Some of the comedy starts to grate when the weight of history’s pressing down. Still, it’s a bold, ambitious film with moments of genius. Messy, flawed, but unforgettable. A tragic farce that’s as exhausting as it is impressive.
I keep coming back to that word: unforgettable. Even the parts that frustrated me, the sequences that went on a beat or three too long, the symbolism that started piling up like furniture in a skips, they have lodged themselves somewhere I cannot quite dislodge them. The image of a tank at a wedding is not something the brain files away neatly. For all its excess, and there is plenty of it, Underground does what only the best messy films manage: it leaves a mark. Sometimes the films that demand the most from you are the ones worth sitting with longest, even when, especially when, they refuse to make it easy.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1995 | Watched: 2025-09-02
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Underground (1995) on YouTube
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