La vie est un miracle!

Life is really a miracle, or rather some miracles. And one of them is to realize that at least one director, despite of the lack of ideas, capabilities, culture and courage nowadays creeping through the modern cinema background, can still shoot such wonderful masterpieces. Kusturica perfectly draws scenes and characters, plays with music and animals, skilfully weaves the plot and cover the whole lenght of the movie with something magic that only a Jugoslavian can create. This is film obviously shows also a dramatic and harsh reality, but always relieved by a light-hearted approach to life.

I do not really understand how can someone assert that this movie is a copy or a repetition of previous Kusturica's ones. Should have any sense, for example, a critic to the great Kurosawa because some of his genial masterpieces are similar one another or since they deal always with samurai's stories?

But a good one anyway. Director Kusturica has already accustomed us with his caricatural way of telling stories occurring in several parts of former Yugoslavia presenting their characters as burlesque. He doesn't ridicule them, however. In fact he shows love and even some tenderness for them. He simply doesn't take life seriously and plays in a first class way with war, ethnic conflict, love and so on. But sentiment and emotion are not altogether absent of this movie. Behind the humorous scenes we can feel the depth of love that arises between the Serbian railway engineer and his supposed prisoner Muslim girl that he intends to exchange for his son who was captured by the Bosnian army during the Bosnian war of 1992. Some of the love scenes are full of humour but also of poetry and even fantasy like when their bed flies over the fields of Bosnia in some kind of dream. The first part of the movie is a quick succession of funny incidents and accidents. When the love story begins in the second part its pace is a bit more calm without losing completely its rapid rhythm. It's a movie that puts you on a happy frame of mind and don't forget the important role of the she-donkey which will make you laugh at several scenes. In the end the animal performs even an important part in the issue of the story that without its intervention would probably have a sad outcome.

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.

Life is a miracle-a great title for a great movie

Kusturica has the talent to give us a film that will make the saddest person smile and think to himself that life is really a miracle, while it lasts, and we should enjoy every second...the movie transports it's viewers to a typical Kusturica world, full of music and dreamy situations. He tries to show us that life is not written in a straight line, that the most unexpected events like falling in love in the most dreadful scenario (i.e. war) can happen when you least expect it.

A film that touches the human soul, that will make you cry as well as laugh... just like real life.

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