Palmerston North Film Society: Life is a Miracle

Life Is a Miracle (Zivot je cudo)
Directed by Emir Kusturica
Serbia-Montenegro/France 2004, 155mins

The film opens just as construction has been completed on a railway connecting a mountainous region of eastern Bosnia and Serbia in 1992. Luka, a Serbian engineer, has moved to Bosnia from Belgrade with his wife, Jadranka, and his football-playing son, Miloš, to run a railway station and act as caretaker. Luka is at work preparing the opening of the railway while Miloš attempts to become a professional footballer with the Partizan team.

Utterly engrossed in his work and blinded by natural optimism, Luka remains deaf to the increasingly persistent rumblings of war, which has broken out in Croatia and threatens to spread.

This is a brilliantly choreographed three-ring circus, complete with lovesick donkey and home-invading bear. His boisterous, absurdist vision of the outbreak of war in 1992 swirls around Luka, a Serbian railway engineer living in the tiny Bosnian town of Golobuci, with his manic-depressive opera-singing wife and his soccer-star son Milos.

War brings drastic changes, not least his wife’s elopement with a sleazy Hungarian musician and his own irresistible attraction to the blonde Muslim nurse who is supposed to be his hostage.

“This film is a comic celebration of Balkan joie de vivre and the beauty of the Bosnian countryside (80 per cent of the film is shot outdoors, through the changing seasons); a story of one man’s obsessive dream and the havoc that it wreaks on those around him; a forceful and ironic polemic against conventional readings of the politics of the break-up of Yugoslavia; and a tragic tale of impossible love which makes explicit allusion to Shakespeare.” Julian Graffy, Sight and Sound.

“Kusturica presents a different perspective on the Bosnian War from the one we are familiar with. Sure, there are occasional references to the war's atrocities and summary executions, and in clear allusion to the profiteering corruption of Bosnia's political class, the village's grotesque new mayor Filopovic (Nikola Kojo) is seen, surrounded by whores, snorting cocaine from the rail tracks which he has appropriated for his lucrative smuggling operations. Yet Kusturica is far more interested in showing the disruptive impact of war on ordinary, decent people like Luka and Sabaha, as well as on essentially honourable soldiers like Captain Aleksic (played by Kusturica's son Stribor).” Anton Bitel, Movie Gazette.

Did you know?
The BBFC originally requested cuts to a scene where a cat attacks a live pigeon. The cut was waived before release after the director provided the censors with evidence that the scene was faked and the bird was not hurt.

Members only. Palmerston North Film Society Membership is available at the door before each screening and lasts for one full year.

Event listed by Ross Stevenson

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