La vie est un miracle!

There is no film maker today to bring to screen the beauty and madness of the Balkans like Kusturica does. 'Life is a miracle' will be seen in time, I believe, as the ultimate film about the Bosnian war.

The main character Luka (played by Slavko Stimac) is a train engineer, building a railroad in a remote corner of Yugoslavia, near the Bosnian border. It's the end of the communist rule, and lingering ethnic conflicts start showing up and replace the patriarchal life. When war breaks, Luka's son will be drafted into the Serbian army and fall prisoner, while his wife runs out with a Hungarian singer. The conflict around that he tried to ignore by work, partying and booze invades his life. And still salvation is out there, the day a beautiful Bosnian prisoner (yet a neighbor of yesterday) shows up Luka will build a plan to make an exchange of prisoners between her and her son, but soon will fall in love.

Kusturica succeeds to paint in naive painters colors a world that slowly slides from normality into madness, where neighbors become enemies, and violence the rule. He is funny and exuberant, but his humor is the humor of the fool of the village, and his exuberance is the exuberance of desperation. As in many great movies it is love that redeems and brings back human feelings to where they should be. Kusturica builds a world of characters who are tragic and funny, colorful and overall avid to live a life despite of the vicissitudes of history.

Wonderful.

It's a best movie I have seen during the last few years. After the film I had feeling that Hollywood is just a factory producing cheep colored jewelry. The film is a drama with happy end. In this movie you can find real feelings, real values. There is described the philosophy of war, how stupid and silly it can be. Kusturica's humor is sharp and true. The most funny for me in this film was a place with international "peacekeeping" organizations , there "role" in solving of conflicts, "saving" people. In fact the author shows how useless and inadequate are those organizations in such cases. Kusturica is a great as usual and the soundtrack like in all his films too.

This is the best Kusturica's film i have seen. I was very pleased and smiling when i got out of the cinema. It's is very nice to watch that, being always himself, the director was able to improve his style and understand the most powerful elements of each of his previous films, so this time he mixed the lightness and joy of "Crna macka, beli macor" (black cat white cat) with the seriousness and dramatic feelings of "underground".. plus a romance, which is truly explored for the first time in a Kusturica's film, and with high sensitivity i must say.

So, in this one the scenery is a typical Black cat, a almost wild village near the serbia - bosnia border, where a railroad is being built, in the middle of a feeling of pre war. Here we find the main character, this humble man with a (devily insane) wife and a son. Things move forward and he looses both when she escapes with some Hungarian and he goes to war where becomes a prisoner. Than we have the last important character showing up, Sabaha (performed by a dazzling Natasa Solak, truly beautiful). Around this context Kusturica builds a very intense psychological diary of the man, who has constantly to decide whether to save his son or stay with his love (you'll understand how when you get to watch the film), as well as to deal with his returning wife vs his new lover. Better to observe that in the film than to talk about it. Apart from that you get a lot of Kusturica elements and typical way of making laugh, such as through a mule who is constantly trying to commit suicide in the railroads or the fantastic scene in the football game. In opposition to this you have this scene where Luka (main character) desperately grabs his son foot ball and cries over it. Powerful. Mixing the beautiful Balcan's landscapes and the ambiguous, but typical and enjoyable "no smoking" soundtrack and never loosing the posture of portraying ex yugoslavia social environment (like in the references to Tito, ex dictator of the balcans), kusturica creates this romantic but also dramatic comedy, which is the most difficult thing to put in films, as far as i observe. You have in this one that strange laughing/crying effect you find in for instance La Vita e bella or in most of Chaplin's movies. You spend the movie laughing but suddenly you feel very sad, and disturbed and understand you saw something sensitive and great...

From time to time pace gets to slow and if the film was 15 min shorter it wouldn't be worst. Apart from that it's a powerful European creation. It's Kusturica for sure. 8/10

Talented forward Milos Djukic dreams of playing for Partizan Belgrado. But his dream shatters when the war between the Serbians and Bosnians escalates. He gets drafted by the Serbian army and must report for duty. Disaster strikes when he gets captures. The only way to free him is to trade him for a Bosnian nurse who's held captive at his fathers house.

The least i can say about this movie is that is surprised me. Surprised by its drama, comedy, romance, absurdity.. Yes, this movie has it all. It combines all genres in a terrific mixture which interested me from the beginning until the end. Which is not an easy thing to do considering that this movie lasts two and a half hours. It gets along quite smoothly without real twists in the plot or having to accelerate 'cause there isn't a real climax this movie strives to (accept the obvious one, but thats not what this movie is really about).

Don't expect to get blown away by this picture, it wont knock your socks off. It'll give you a nice, subtle, smooth ride for your money.

8/10

I think this movie won't surprise anyone who has already seen another movie by this great film-maker: it is the same place (Blakans) and style as we are used to. If you liked his other movies, you will surely like this one too.

The story develops around a small bosnian village, where the lives of his inhabitants are changed by the war that shattered Bosnia 12 years ago. So far nothing extraordinary, but what makes his movies different are the atmosphere and life that springs out of every image.

There are two levels at which you can perceive this movie: the first is the rational level: the story, the gags (as in all his movies, humor has a central part) and so on. The second might be called irrational, because it has to do with identification and feelings: you are taken out of your seat and are part of what happens on the screen. Drama is placed very closely to comedy, and sometimes the change is so sudden your laughs freeze on your face. This I guess is the landmark of this movie: dramatic scenes build upon, and increase their strength from, funny scenes. After all, nothing can be taken seriously in the Balkans :-)

I won't say too much about the story, partly because I don't want to spoil your fun, partly because I feel it's unimportant. Suffice to say that the war is presented only by its "reflection" in peoples lives -- this is what matters most in Kusturica's view. There are no battle scenes.

I think the only thing I can reproach is that once or twice I felt the gags were exaggerated, a bit unnatural. But all Kusturica's movies have a dose of fantastic, so this is not a real problem.

I cannot end without pointing out the great performance of the lead actor, Slavko Stimac (Luka). All in all, I would strongly recommend this movie.