Das Pulverfass

Goran Paskaljevic outdoes himself with this dark, satiric drama-comedy. What he gives us here is Serbia in a nutshell, a post-war Serbia torn with crime, anger and mistrust. "Who's to blame?" is the central question here and the line is spoken several times throughout the movie, once in a particularly hilarious scene. The bus scene is the one that illustrates the situation Serbia and most of former Yugoslavia are in-chaos. There is no one behind the wheel, so everybody is trying to take control.

There is no way to write about this film without saying something about the cast. It consists of all the finest Serbian and Yugoslav actors (two of them, Trifunovic and Glogovac, are from Herzegovina originally and two are from Macedonia) and it is one of the cases where the entire cast is the protagonist. Particularly fine performances come from Miki Manojlovic, Mirjana Jokovic, Mirjana Karanovic, Voja Brajovic, Aleksandar Bercek, Nebojsa Glogovac and Lazar Ristovski. The storyline is incredibly well built and all stories and characters are equally good.

This is a flawless, high quality tragicomedy which will provide you great entertainment and watching experience, as well as a good insight into the situation of this country. It is a humanistic and poignant film with a message, a cry for help. Balkan-a barrell of gunpowder, a-hole of the world.

As truth can be defined by the observer, it is also guided by the artist. This film is as close to truth in film as one can get. The state of the Balkans is one which cannot be easily defined, but understood, if you understand its peoples. The truth of this film lies in the reactionary maelstrom that has been the Balkans for a very, very long time. The film ties the lives together of many, equally bizarre characters and events which are tied together artistically by a collage of madness and life on the edge of it. Please do not miss this film, and watch it several times if possible.

A great movie. Someone should surely dislike it, but surely it will be impressed in your head and heart like the explosion of millions of bombs...a bang in my heart, absolutely stupend and upsetting...the bombs are inside of everyone, ready to explode and destroy your minds and bodies.

There are so few movies out there of this caliber. Though certainly a visceral movie, there is a feeling of connectedness with the characters that (though somewhat negated by the foreign language) makes this more than just an intense viewing. Sure, at the end, I breathed a sigh of relief and let go of the knot in my stomach, but the best part of this movie is its study of human nature on the edge. What makes this movie so awful to watch is not that the characters can be so evil, but that you know that they aren't inherently so. Please go see this movie now.

Very bleak and disturbing movie ridden with dark symbolism and utterly depressing resolutions. But what else would you expect from a film depicting a day in Belgrade on the eve of NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia. It is a great film though, but which deals with the dakrest subject matter, focusing on a society in the throws of agony, continuous degradation of the social fabric, and erosion of humanity under extreme conditions.

You can accuse it of being pretentious, self-indulging, or of trying to cover its supposed lack of substance by overwhleming use of violence, but you are living *here* in your cozy apartments, with your salaries and plentiful consumer goods while many people *there* actually experienced the life that is depicted in this movie. "Cabaret Balkan" is one gutwrenching scream of anguish and despair in the face of the harsh reality that people had to endure, and still do, judging by the latest news from Yugoslavia.