Srdjan Todorovic
Underground Review
Very Good
Emir Kusturica evokes Fellini and Jeunet in his epic Underground, which (in a greatly simplified nutshell) tells the story of a group of Yugoslavian weapons manufacturers who hide in a bomb cellar during World War II, only to come up decades later to find Yugoslavia in an entirely new situation (that of the 1990s). Kusturica creates memorable characters and puts them in increasingly surreal scenarios, but he's awfully long-winded in the storytelling. Trim an hour off this beast and you've got a masterpiece.