Time of the Gypsys (1988) - Emir Kusturica

Third feature by Bosnian, or Yugoslav for some, Kusturica, certainly a huge work, in which his growth as a filmmaker, as an artist in the Balkan filmmaker, is simply brutal. Kusturica had already pointed very good manners in his previous works: in both Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981), his debut, and When father was away on business (1985), his second work, had generated a remarkable consistency, a very recognizable unity in his work; he produced a solid diptych which embodied the reality of his native Sarajevo, in addition to outlining a narrative and aesthetic elements that felt, although significant and remarkable, still embryonic. The evolutionary leap that gives Kusturica for his third work is, as stated, a brutal action, such as giving a definitive hit to the table, in one single movement the filmmaker gets to some really huge evolutionary leaps in his visual language and technical staging. I have rarely seen a director take such a remarkable growth as creative leap, Kusturica almost reached its peak as a filmmaker, really early. Based on a script co-authored by Emir himself, he tells the story of a gypsy young fellow, a teenager, who, prisoner of circumstances, wanting to improve the deteriorated health of his sister, travels with her to Italy, where a powerful mobster will enter him into underground, underworld and prostitution, having fatal consequences. A powerful feature from many points of view, the best of what Eastern European film production has provided in recent decades.


            

The evolution of Kusturica is so shockingly evident that from the beginning, with that great opening shot sequence to start the film, he seemed to have reached more achievements than in his previous works together, at least narratively and perhaps aesthetically. So rich and powerful it is that initial sequence, as vigorous as eloquent introduction letter, that brings to mind pictures that have also used this resource, a large sequence shot opening, plotting the film, while outlining the characters, presenting them to the viewer; just to give an example, I remember The Godfather I and II, the reader will probably recognize many other examples of the use of this very effective narrative and expressive technique also. Framed in this broad and resolute display of audiovisual expression, we have the sketch, the painting, the image, the picture the director wants to convey, in which we see not only images but also realities. The most endearing character, and after seeing some wife shattered by drunken groom, becomes the mustachioed gambler, uncle Merdzan (Husnija Hasimovic) with his group of poker players, and the camera focuses them, then show us on a long and delicious traveling, animals, ducks, pigs, sheep, puddles, mud, fog; the miserable and poor living environment portrayed and where the wedding takes place; the usual proximity, folklore that had already noticed in previous films of the Balkan director is back here.

The camera follows the pacing environment, the frustrated wedding, showing all its characters, and being the obvious standard that sort of madman who speaks directly, talks to us about his ethnicity, his people, gypsies and his appear to be damned lineage, sharing a story of how Gypsies and God, from the beginning, never understood, that he is not to blame for the way he is; it is a sharp cry of Gypsies self introduction by the director. This self-portrait continues, combined with the well known Emir’s corrosive humor, the mustachioed gambler, who speaks with God, impotent, calls to get some recognition, something for him and his people, only getting silence and failure for what he asks, better luck in gambling. Continuing, one of the areas where growth is seen particularly sharp and clear in Kusturica, is the operation of the camera, the way it operates, the most supreme freedom that seems to have acquired, an unprecedented ease, Kusturica is getting a truly remarkable and almost overwhelming dominance with the camera with this, his third feature only. Follow collaboration with his hitherto unique cameraman, loyal and efficient Vilko Filac, and together make up this magnificent movie work in which the camera comes and goes freely, with determination slides following the protagonists to expressive angles, where it feels the enthusiasm of a young filmmaker, and where you feel a strong and self-possessed camera on display. Freedom of the camera achieved by the director of the Balkans is one of several vital surprises of this film. That severe evolution is also evidenced with some clever tricks, noticing Perhan (Davor Dujmovic), teaching Azra (Sinolicka Trpkova) how lime is prepared, performing a travelling that attests to the expertise reached by Kusturica, and in what we realise, importantly, that the filmmaker seems to have fun creating his art.

Also, something remarkable becomes the soundtrack, mostly of gypsy origin, also of folk, close to the people and their customs, their origins, something very typical of the filmmaker. That music, added to a more-than-correct camera work, ends up generating the halo of omnipresence in certain moments, and that huge dream-halo in others, with the camera and its movements "entering" the surreal action represented. That musical parsimony, composed of genuine parts of gypsy localities reach moments of diverse nature, festive, or regret, as when Perhan is separated from his sister. It will always be an element to sum up in representing a situation or convey an emotion. Efficient tools to portray a world full of pathos, pathos very near where the son Merdza complains to his mother Khaditza (Ljubica Adzovic) who flatters his teenage nephew, her grandson, with a turkey, instead of presenting something to him, a clod gambler, and good for nothing fellow. The guy ends up forcing sex to his nephew's girlfriend, he is a boor; Grandma is important in the film, being a link between his grandson and the memories of his mother, and the last link of Perhan with his initial and unrecoverable world. Also, an inescapable element of the film, and the whole oeuvre until this work of Kusturica, is the perennial inclination or mention of Italy, considered in his first two films as a distant reality to his entire environment, as something far away, an external exhaust point as a kind of escape. But it is an escape never achieved, only glimpsed, only desired; it is never achieved as finally seen in this picture.

So close is the link with Italy that it does not seem unreasonable to suggest a very close staging treatment, between the sequence in which Perhan leaves his country to go to the mafia, and the famous neorealism-sequence with Anna Magnani running behind a truck in Rome, Open City (1945) by Roberto Rossellini. In my view, no doubt that Kusturica appreciated that feature, and knew to perceive the force that gave off that immortal neorealist sequence, somehow assuming those guidelines; thus you will appreciate the shot sequence while trembling camera onboard the vehicle, shows the exciting journey full of intense feeling and regret at the departure; and instead of Magnani, we see the locals rushing to bid farewell the young. And finally in Italy the characters, director also plotted the mafia eloquently presenting the mobster almost as a Vito Corleone, perhaps no accident in another nod to the Latin culture, the Mediterranean world, as we look the italic country again as the undeniable center of a so desired liberty, the point of escape, exit, escaping that world, devourer of our protagonists. We will see the negligible subject around distributing money to almost commoners, who pay homage and beg his favors; he is the epiphanic element of the film, he is the one who will mark a before and after in the life of Perhan, and on the picture. Ahmed breaks in the boy's life and changes his routine life in the countryside and the Balkan misery, by the hectic world of Western prostitution in Italy; and what is more, given the sudden physical deterioration generated in Ahmed, the young man gets at the head of operations, his humanity is transformed, decomposes, becomes rottenn, it is a journey from which Perhan will never return from.

The wedding sequence is one of the main seals of the director, always prints so much at weddings scenes, there is always plenty to transmit, the director outlines and presents so much through those scenes, in many films; however, this is the first time in Kusturica that a sequence with such a significant, expressive and narrative load is presented as opening sequence of the film. We have already gotten the characters diagrammed, and even more importantly, their origin, their feelings, both of the characters and of the same filmmaker, all so dyed and flavored with that delicious humor of his: a voluminous fiancee scolds his totally drunken still groom; a man practicing pseudo martial arts while inside a house the intentions of marriage by the young protagonist are strongly discussed; the young, helpless and impotent after being rejected because of his bastard origins by his beloved's mother, tries to commit suicide by hanging himself, only to torn the church bells; the portrayed image of the land by Kusturica does not stop, the old women arguing with singular fervor regarding the young Perhan deflowering the beautiful Azra; to his overwhelmingly shrieking and scandalous woman, an individual throws down his cigarette, smoke puffs but not by mouth but by the ears, delirious situation after which, to get rid of the loud torture, the man hangs his wife on a peg, not guaranteeing this to stop the rant. The humor, the comic charge of the filmmaker retains its seal, corrosive and realistic, he caricatures their portrayed fellows, and sometimes more than one even qualify that as exaggeration.

Another wedding will take place, but this time the snow falls incessantly, as allegory to the fall, the ruin that has taken place in our protagonist. In the same way, there is a sequence of the final party, again with a wedding background, in which the group merriment is replaced by the deranged Perhan, who unleashes his fury and wipes out, among others, the one he defines was once his father and God; disappointed and seeing the reality of the machiavellian and false savior, he killed him with her telekinetic powers. Again we see a quirk of Kusturica common to all his oeuvre, and that is his well known metaphysical element: hypnotism first (Do you remember ...), sleepwalking later (When Father Was Away on Business), telekinesis now, it is therefore an inevitable element and indivisible part of the work of Bosnian, configuring, with elements like that, his realistic and magical fantasy at a time, always portrayed with ease and simplicity. Kusturica also always endues his works with a link with the animals, each time with a relative symbolic, significant load. This time the animal element is embodied with pet turkey, which dies, dies like the rabbit in Do you remember ... and like at that time, the animal's death denotes the end of a stage, the end of the innocence, and in this work, the pet animal will continue letting its presence be noticed, like the sequence with the ethereal final presentation of the bird at the time of expiration of the master.

A breaking point in the film (and in Perhan) is when Danira (Elvira Sali), his sister, is admitted to hospital, she is desperately screaming for her brother not to leave her, and him, dam of impotence, is breaking, it is crumbling inside, something is changing, while the caramel apples fall the ground; his sister is the origin of everything, the source from which came the situation that will end in his destruction, and is in that first moment of helplessness where begins to consummate his decline. The final moment where Perhan's humanity is irreversibly decomposed comes when he meets with his beloved muse, finding her pregnant, apparently he lost its dignity and quality of immaculate; she and her apparent sinking represent another point of no return for Perhan, a little more of him is broken, and there is no going back. The height of this pathos, this decay is masterfully captured by Kusturica in the dance sequence, with Perhan drunk in a shady setting in which we can feel his throbbing pain, we can almost feel that pain after finding his beloved pregnant, his soul all shattering while hiding behind a false happiness, drinking, dancing, getting drunk, laughing on the outside, crying on the inside; an almost ritualistic sequence portrays suffering and pathos with a sensitivity and contrast force seldomly seen, as we know all the misery that is going through, while dancing with distorted face, while spraying a beer all over a  woman while violins speak to us regarding his pain.

The cinema of Kusturica generates sensations in which at times we feel the film, his film has no limits, we appreciate his movies to the fullest, and incredibly, knowing what would later be able to produce the Bosnian, we know that is not this artistic ceiling. The possibilities are exploited tremendously, dreamlike ones particularly, and as usual in a film of this nature, those sequences are the ideal space, the free highway for the filmmaker expresses full liberty, to transgress the words, linearity. In this present case, Perhan's first dream, aquatic irruption, with a community apparently living in that surreal lagoon, shows the power of the director, that is definitely the strongest display of Emir's evolution as audiovisual poet. All of his power, folk, simple, beautiful and profound music that accompanies those slow and pervasive tracking shots through the waters, people floating, sinking, fire also floating among them, generates a visual sequence that transports us to a paradise, is his dream ethereal environment, his dream is almost sacred. The then still young Kusturica shows his art in all its splendor, fresh cinema, innovative, self-assured, powerful and eloquent, aesthetically unprecedented, reaching abrupt and early the highest levels of cinema, art, a true, contemporary master filmmaker was taking his definitive steps on the international stage. The next dream sequence by the Balkan comes to incarnate this time in the character of the deceased mother. And again we feel the film without limits, this time in a more sublime way, surrealist mother across the sky like a sylph, smiling at her daughter as she and her brother set off on this journey there will be no return.

The third dream sequence is also very powerful, the dead pet turkey gives access to a rural world, Perhan plays the accordion, his grandmother let him know of his longing, and all-consuming fire, a local square, an italian piazza burns,  as well as the house that was pending on heaven, the house that Merdzan had lifted, perhaps symbolizing that all that Perhan had abandoned is no longer there, has been destroyed, consumed, as it has had burned in flames. Perhan has been degraded, has lost its soul, wants to sell the child Azra carries in her womb, a child who is not known for sure if it's his, but what we do know is that Perhan's is already another human being, he has changed, and a lot. For the third time in a row, Kusturica choses as protagonist and leading edge of the picture a young fellow, Perhad in this case will be our vehicle to run in the feature, and in him we see a remarkable change, from a physical variation, losing his unique-looking glasses, to inner change, which is the most traumatic and unrecoverable; after so much helplessness and humiliation, he lost his innocence, his faith in humanity, and finally his life itself. The sequence of Azra in childbirth work is the core of the fourth dreamlike sequence, perhaps the most beautiful: the girl, after leaving a trail of her white veil, loses that element, appears lying in the field, magically levitates under the night sky. Everything revolves around her rapidly, the new creature comes into the world, the ethereal music returns to flow, setting the beautiful and sad sequence which will be closed with an impotent Perhan hugging and kissing his lifeless wife.



       

Realism and fantasy meet in Kusturica's films, this is one of his constants, one of his major labels, one of the resources that best uses the filmmaker to express his world, and it is not surprising that more than one calls or tittles his film works into a stream apparently known as magical realism. Fair to some extent coined the term, considering the strong realistic load of the situations portrayed, always close and always realistically Kusturica portrays his context and land; but that undeniable realistic imprint, goes hand on hand with other movement that has no less force than the first one, and that is the surreal dreamlike field that merges with reality as an indivisible braid. Both worlds walk together in the cinema of the Bosnian, and although the term and complete justice or accuracy of it with his art may be questionable or debatable, it is not the fact that the filmmaker makes both sides, supposed to be antagonists, come together, therein lies one of the many causes of brilliance Balkan director. As mentioned, this will add to his already known and very particular sense of humor, increasingly scathing, more effective, more bizarre than ever. Among the figures created in the film, we see the red candied apples with intense colour that appear in quite significant moments. These sweetened fruits give Perhad farewell to his hometown, and also receive him back, are present at his funeral. They let go an innocent boy, to receive the body of a decadent and spoiled version of the same individual.

Another element where are extraordinarily combined reality with dreamlike, symbolism with reality, it is when Merdzan literally lifts up the house of his mother. The despicable and abject subject, not having money to pay bills betting, tries to blackmail his mother, raising the house using a vehicle; the house is flying literally, hanging by a rope while the tormented but measured grandmother reads a story to the sobbing granddaughter, to set up another of the figures of greater strength and vitality of the director in his film. Kusturica has already became a visual poet, is already a schoolmaster to express himself through images, sounds, adding to beautiful shots and frames, sensitive music, close to what it portrays, and breathes his sensitivity, his keenness to represent and convey emotions like few in today's cinema can. Kusturica reaches new levels in his art, the cohesion and the unity and coherence with previous pictures are not lost, they are multiplied by all the developments achieved in only the third feature from director, attesting such a rapid and impressive evolution, reaching a level of unparalleled contemporary cinema to the overwhelming majority of filmmakers. Winning film awards, among others, the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the film has extensive repertoire to be discussed, repeating the young Davor Dujmovic as an actor, Kusturica gives us his to that point, 1988, definitely greater movie work, more accomplished and ambitious, the most powerful and beautiful, leaving the path paved and ready for what would become his masterpieces ground. Emir is making strides.