Super 8 Stories

I did not know what to expect when I went to see this film. It did not have a story line. It did not have any message to deliver. It did not have glamorous stars to show. It was not directed by Spielberg. Still it worked somehow. Great music, lovely characters, sparkling sense of humor...very entertaining, very European, very Kusturica.

Madman Yugoslav director EMIR KUSTERICA (UNDERGROUND, BLACK CAT WHITE CAT) makes a documentary about touring w/ the band NO SMOKING ORCHESTRA throughout Europe. Emir actually plays guitar w/ the band, stogie firmly clamped between his teeth, hat perched on his head. This doesn't give a lot of insight on the band or the way they write their music as we see a lot of various concert footage and then brief interviews w/ the 10 or so who make up the band. NSO play this unhinged fusion of rock, jazz, gypsy and dirge funeral music w/ instruments such as guitars, tuba, violin, accordion and sax all swirling in and around each other. Some of the music I liked, some I didn't. Too much sax and too much bad vocals by the lead singer. NSO do have a tremendous amount of energy on stage and the audience seems to love them as they play to large, enthusiastic crowds. Lots and lots of super grainy super 8 which was neat. Worth seeing for doc, music or Kusterica fans (has a couple of funny scenes w/ Emir trying to wrestle shirtless w/ the beefier drummer who is I believe his son).

From father's swimming lessons and the Yugoslav highway system, via privileges for officials and Tito's death to Western expansionism ("Drang nach Osten"), house searches and bridges bombed by NATO, Super 8 Stories offers a history of Yugoslavia not unlike Underground.

Of course, the differences are outstanding also. Super 8 says it. This is a private memoir. The memoir of a handful of people who make their living in a cultural spasm between Western and Eastern Europe. On the road in the West, at home in the East. When their bus travels by a pet cemetery with marble terriers and German shepards, each with a carefully engraved name, who wouldn't think of the mass graves of Srebrenica and the Kosovo? Who would? Perhaps, that's the difference between them and their audience.

They joke and they play. They are angry, upset and hurt. And they joke and play again. If the clownesque does not win out, it is at least there. As a survival strategy. As a commentary. As absurd as the pet cemetery and the bombed bridge. As absurd as the applause and the oversized gold jacket.

Unlike any other Kusturica movie, this one shows its materiality, the texture, the grain and the cut, as if to explore what stuff memory, history is made of.

It is a multi layered text and like any other of Kusturica's films, it is also a political statement. Wanting to go home, the accordion player crosses the river like Charon the Styx, because the bridge is destroyed like the Bridge on the Drina.

This is your typical on the road documentary. It's full of inside material, 'read between the lines' nuances and small pleasures that will greatly enhance your viewing experience if you happen to be from former Yugoslavia. Otherwise, as is evident from some of the previous posts here, you might not pick up on them or they may not mean anything to you and the movie will probably seem self-indulgent and boring.

This was one of the very few occasions when I've paid to see a film but felt I'd get more for my money by leaving early and going for a beer instead. It seems to be vaguely inspired (if that's the right word) by Buena Vista Social Club, except that none of the characters actually seem to have anything interesting to say and (a matter of taste, admittedly) the music isn't nearly as good. It also seems to be deliberately badly shot and to be completely devoid of editing, presumably to give a "this is real" feel to the whole thing. All it achieved for me was the sense that I was a fool for having paid to watch this boring, self-indulgent trash (the fact that the film was about Kusturica's own band should perhaps have been a warning...) Save yourself the anguish and miss this film, unless you're madly keen on the music. Kusturica's just trading on his name, and helping to ruin it in the process.