Ordet

Seeing "Dolly Bell" during the recent war in Kosovo forced me to think of the political significance of the film. Almost twenty years after the film was made, Yugoslavia is an extraordinarily different place, albeit one in which traditions die hard. But whether considered in relation to the Yugoslavia of the early 80s or to today's Serbia, what impresses about "Dolly Bell" is its filmmakers' devotion to art and the human condition rather than to a political agenda. It has not become an artifact because it was made to provoke human sympathy, not political reaction. "Dolly Bell" is not a tragicomic masterpiece like "Underground" nor a celebration of optimism and levity in the face of absurdity and injustice as are "When Father Was Away on Business" and "Time of the Gypsies": it is not Kusturica's most clever film, but it is perhaps his most enduring.