Vida Cigana

I'm glad I was bored on a Friday night and decided to browse the foreign film section. I randomly picked Time of the Gypsies, and now it is my favorite. The soundtrack, as well as the movie, is amazing. This film is unique in almost every aspect. It was moving without being too gushy or fake--I highly recommend seeing it. The other commentees have said pretty much everything else about this film in an nicely eloquent way, so I feel I need not elaborate. :)

When I see a Kusturica film, I see the magic of Fellini but with a sinister edge. His characters may be crude and immorally incorrect, but interesting enough as an observation piece that represents the madness of life. All this done through an epic journey taken by the young and shy Perhan, who discovers the crudeness of live that alters his whole believes and existence. The film plays like an opera, but without the soap, making it another Kusturica masterpiece that mixes the real with the bizarre.

'Time of the Gypsies' is a big, full movie.

It is full in the way a magic realism novel is full, with its intergenerational cast of characters; its vivid sense of place, the weather and community life, where private is always public, where joy and tragedy are inextricable; where magic, dream and delusion are indistinguishable.

It is full in the Fellini sense, with its grand, often hallucinatory, set pieces; its profusion of grotesques; its bursting compression of many plots; its general noisiness.

It is one film containing many simultaneous films (a gangster film; a surreal road movie; a romantic comedy; a rites-of-passage; a Christian allegory).

It somehow feels a little thin, like a tapestry of chunks from a massive novel. It is certainly a prime example of retrospective dating - at the time it seemed a masterpiece; over a decade on, it's pastiche Kusturica.

In Russia we have a fine 300 minutes (without kidding) DVD release of the movie (the "director's cut"?). It has its moments. The first part is hilarious and witty. The second one is absurd and insane. The third is depressing and scary. The forth is enterprising and weird. The last one is violent and tragic. To crown it all, the only reason that this feature is an outsider (it is not in IMDb top 250) seems to be the following: not many people saw it.

It doesn't look like fiction. It feels quite gritty and has very adult topics. The Gypsies look and act like Gypsies (well, at least to my taste and knowledge). There was once a serial on Russian TV called "Karmelita", where the Gypsies were shown civilized, snobbish, stylish in their dressing, good-looking, etc. They were talking and talking (in pure Russian, of course, phonetically perfect), showing a little bit more emotion than lamas (sorry my exaggeration). Personally, very thankful to my relatives that they did not spend their precious watching that never ending fiction. The title song in that "Gypsy" serial was sung by Mr Nikolay Baskov (a real "Gypsy" with blond hair). It lasted as long as 200+ parts mixed with good portion of commercials. Instead of prolonged showing of the "epic" "Karmelita" our TV should have shown "Dom za vesanje". On the other hand, they would have spoiled the whole movie by pushing commercials into it. So, let the matter rest.

The only really bad thing about "Dom za vesanje" movie seems to be the way of its DVD presentation: after the end of each part there is a kind of sketch of the next one before the credits roll over. These spoilers are not enjoyable.

Still it also has some minor drawbacks. To me they are camera-work and the absence of powerful scenery shots, i.e. the lack of the contrast and the ability to see what happens in good detail.

An 8 for this poesy of human existence in hellish surroundings will do. Thank you for attention.

This movie shines as an example of pure art in cinema. So powerful with symbolism and story telling, "Time of Gypsies" delivers amazing performances on acting, settings, musical scores, and overall directing.

In year 1988, this movie was one of the most awaited films in the Istanbul International Film Festival. I was one of the lucky ones who had a ticket for the film. When the show time arrived, it was obvious that there was a problem since the film did not started. A lady from the festival committee came to the stage announcing their appology and explaining what the problem was; they were expecting the copy of the film from the its distributor in USA. Unfortunately there was a logistics problem, so they had to get it directly from Yugoslavia. When the festival organisation put their Yugoslavian translators at work they did not understand which language it was! And a cleaning lady, who was an actual gypsy figured out that the movie was in Gypsy language. So it was not possible to translate it for the festival.

So they offered an apology and refund in case anybody did not want to watch it without subtitles.

Nobody left the theatre. We watched the movie without understanding a word. But, at the end there was a standing ovation at the theatre went on for a couple of minutes.