Primitive happiness, uncivilized freedom

Pedro 2021-12-22 08:01:30

I want to express my passion and admiration for all natural things. Now I return to life, color, light and shadow, and abandon the so-called shooting strategy. Gypsies know how to enjoy love and worship every moment of daily life. Their passion and vitality burst out throughout the film. ——Emile Kusturica

"Black Cat and White Cat" is full of a peaceful and surreal sense, and it will not be too exaggerated to make people act too much. All the characters are very interesting. Kusturica sets up many elements and characters that can reflect each other, two pairs of lovers who have become married couples due to mishaps, two pairs of friends who have experienced love, hatred, and hatred. The two-to-two opposing form makes the relationship between the characters have a close relationship, and the strong contrast naturally runs through the film before and after. This kind of contrast is actually hidden in the movie's name, one black and one white, and good fortune and misfortune are interdependent, which makes people can't help but think that Taoist thought prevails in the world. Not only that, the relationship between man and nature is also full of saturated metaphors. Fantasy scenes are built in real life. Everyone is too crazy. Who cares if you add some surreal things to it? Happiness is extremely primitive, and freedom has not yet been civilized. This belongs to the Gypsy under the lens of Kusturica. We don't need to think about everything step by step. If you go carnival with the film, you will not lose respect.

poster

Among people, there is a kind of absurdity of strong contrast.

For Zara and Ida, perhaps the most memorable thing for many people is the chase in the sunflower field. The shy boy and the stray girl undressed one by one in the flower field, innocently removing their shyness, and the prosperous spring was kissed on the smooth carcass. Zara's personality is different from his always wanton father Matt Gao. The young man's confusion and confusion are in Zara's eyes, but he still falls in love with the enthusiastic and cheerful Ida. Even though he knew he was going to be traded by his father to an unreliable marriage, he still wanted to deny it as hard as he could, hoping that his family could follow his own advice. The relative between introversion and extroversion does not affect the generation of love. The concealed crying and sighing at the wedding, the excitement and happiness of making vows while running, the emotions are transferred between two people intact. This is a tacit understanding of love.

At the wedding, Zara had a brief exchange with the equally forced bride Eftitan, and learned that both sides were so reluctant, he decided to help her escape. Efferty Tan is only three feet (about one meter), but she always believes that true love is a matter of instant decision. Crying, screaming, and resisting the domineering brother, there is a kind of fierceness in her body. On the way to escape from marriage, she took off her heavy clothes and pink high heels while running, and her veil flew freely in the sky like her. Hidden in the hollow tree stump, he ran barefoot and met a man driving a carriage in the middle of the road. One is short and one is tall, like a prophecy from the family blood in the grandfather's oil painting. This is also love at first sight. Naturally and even in combination, their somewhat absurd love always reminds me of Strickland in Maugham's writings. The man who pursued art and freedom left modern society and went to Tahiti to marry an indigenous woman and complete it on the island. His own handed down works. The artistic pursuit is over, and the fire burns both life and paintings.

The lover here ends up, but the scene of deep hatred is on the other side. There is a great drama tension between Dadan and Matt Gao. Dadan’s madness and Matt Gao’s delusion are cleverly entangled: one is a black-hearted and cunning businessman robber, the other is a daydreaming ridiculous bastard, two people. Sometimes there is a tense confrontation and sometimes a dance together, the conflict is set off at the dance party, and it ends in the music. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, women, money, endless noise, Dadan danced feverishly among these elements. The same silly gambler Matt Gao stepped onto the dance floor of Dadan's dominance. He only wanted money, but he had to bear a greater price, including the lost three carriages and the one with an umbrella hanging on a weight. The man’s body, a good opportunity for his father to be buried, and his son’s marriage. In my opinion, it is very interesting that although Dadan is a villain and has committed many evil deeds, but the exaggerated performance makes me not hate him too much. Perhaps Kusturica is very good at controlling the good. The measure of evil is the result of such a comedy that is pure and deep, simple but not vulgar.

Zara and Ada

And between man and nature, the film seems to say that there will be miracles if life and death are detached.

The structure of the film is somewhat unimaginative. The musicians tied to the tree to play music, the female singer who pulls the nails in a special way, the subordinate who is always reading, Dadan who throws grenade as a toy, Matt Gao who drinks gasoline, Ada, who plays with guns at will, Geerga, who never walks and sits in a car with his own oxygen inhaler, understands his own life and death, and the magical reality is staged. The scenes are overwhelming and surprises come.

At the same time, the film shot a large number of animals, hot dogs at the beginning, swarms of white geese, ducks floating on the river with Huan's grandfather, and fat pigs eating car iron skin endlessly day and night. , And the black cats and white cats that appear at every important turning point, seem to be an important part of confirming the existence of rural life. Just like animals, humans can wander aimlessly, both grow in nature, and die in nature.

There are many images of black cats and white cats. The older generations have said that the black cat is a symbol of bad luck, and the black cat must be driven out when he enters the house. The white cat is always beside the black cat, and two cats seem to appear anywhere-happiness and pain are everywhere, and blessings and misfortunes are mutually dependent. Life is going to pass, and the soul is doomed, but we can still pursue bliss and not avoid pain, just like the funeral is covered by a wedding in the plot, hiding the lament in the emotion of great joy, ah, continue to play music, and then dance (laughs).

Firearms have become proof of primitiveness and barbarism here, because people don't seem to take such extremely lethal weapons seriously in their daily lives. Ada used it to have fun at will, hitting the flower pot as fun, until she laughed and then escaped. Matt Gao throws grenades at random at the wedding, throws it as a ball when he is happy, pulls out the safety plug and throws it away when he is unhappy. The attitude towards weapons is normal, and the same seems to be true for life and death. Dadan stabbed the man to death and hung it on a tall weight, and made him hold the umbrella with his stiff hand, hiding in the bushes to see how Matt Gao jumped up to take his bag and climbed high. The bracket maintains a hilarious balance in a scene full of drama.

Killed man holding an umbrella

Combining film and history, I deeply feel Kusturica's Yugoslav complex that cannot disappear. He said in his autobiography "Where am I in History":

...I came to this conclusion: forgetting is like a gate through which we discharge heavy and unpleasant thoughts about the past, and thoughts about the future will be cleared in the same way. This is possible because the main components of life will not change. After experiencing the scourge of the Balkan War and the artillery fire in Serbia, even I myself began to practice forgetting, at least to expel the thoughts that lingered in my mind. ...In the room of the forgotten rule, there is always an open space for the heroes who have been forgotten by the times.
I think forgetting is one reason why people can live, but I will never give in to forgetting. Nowadays, how many people succumb to the social system of raising chickens in cages. The chickens in these cages will always remember the food they ate in the last bite. Some people even used forgetting to create the final conclusion of history, a theory that conquered the entire world in the 1990s. The advocates of liberal capitalism want us to sever all ties with our own culture and identity, so that we can also be involved in the vortex of the technological revolution, and let us believe that this can dredge the river of our destiny and can regulate our life process. It's working. This arrogant attempt awakened a longing in my heart. I wanted to keep what I should remember and clear what I should forget.

After feeling the temperature of Yugoslavia-the disappearing country-he could not forget the real events that destroyed his homeland. So here he used comedy to express what he wanted to remember, seemingly inadvertent, but actually unforgettable. He yearns for freedom more than many people, and he is willing to record even the original and unimportant fragments. None of us succumb to oblivion, movies, books, voices, images, in this fast world, I just want a moment of peace, to burn the true desires in my heart.

Where am i in history
8.6
[Serbia] Emir Kusturica / 2017 / Hunan People's Publishing House

Emile Kusturica

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Extended Reading
  • Jarvis 2022-04-24 07:01:14

    A beautiful friendship. He used the goose to wipe his feces. .

  • Sincere 2021-12-22 08:01:30

    Written by Kusturica from Sarajevo, the story takes place in the Danube and Serbia, an absurd comedy, Happy End. Although the depth is far inferior to his predecessor "Underground" (which is also my favorite film in the former Yugoslavia), "Black Cat and White Cat" is an absurd film that influenced the five people. It seems to be a bit similar in style. I finally know why PeopleSoft uses the accordion as His playing instrument.

Black Cat, White Cat quotes

  • Matko Destanov: The Bulgarians always say: "Brother, if you can't solve a problem with money... solve it with a lot of money."