Life is a Miracle - Emir Kusturika

The wave of tragicomic Kusturika does not deny its effect, although this time the criticism leave leaked an enthusiasm hardly sufficient. Released in 2004, "Life is a Miracle" embodies fully the poetic popular-delusion of the director, whose contrasts and mixed flow for the first time sailing along the distinctly heroic romance.

Set in Bosnia in 1992, torn by civil war, the plot could be split into two very different sequences. The first runs from the railway construction project by Luka, father of a teenager, an aspiring football player and husband of a former opera singer-featured grotesque limits of madness, until the departure of the child and the temporary disappearance of his wife. The second phase, much more involving, lasts from the arrival of Sabah, fragile "nymphet" Muslim from barter to free his son Milos, who became a prisoner of war, ending with the return of a family now "infected" by the tragedy.

The first part of the matter is diluted on-psychedelic neurosis lunatic wife of Luka. The sober life of the latter serves as a counterpoint to establish a balance home on the edge of an old railway to be rebuilt. Scene drunk and battered, typical of the director, contrary to the will of those who take steps to define the borders, organize the hunting of bears and preside at a ceremony in which the political conventions degenerate into a ridiculous lyric embarrassing. Once again a bottle against a reality that you choose. Kusturika is the master against the trampling of the history and get away sooner or later your spider. The opportunity always comes from the unpleasant events: Milos in prison and Luka, affected by the inevitable falls in love with Sabah. Started their Dionysian wander with bombs of war in the background and beds to dream of flying. The same stained snow and the feeling desecrating the resulting leads the grand finale in which the return and farewell, pleasure and pain merge into a single gala dell'agrodolce Joint waiting for the next train. This time, tied to the rails.

However, the applicant relationship with the animal world, poor conscience, will maintain the symbolism of a tragedy redeemed by memory. Last and broken like the look of a donkey stuck on the tracks, the memory will die. Yet it may still be the key to survival. Once again the occasion. Once again a nature that blesses and mocks at the same time.

Kusturika's life is a miracle, not so much to the amazement with which he regenerates, but for the opening of the possibility that their meaning from nothing and that the same way and at the same time I forgive him. In shameless limit events, in which the idle of the nonsense yawns to the "why" of man, a rat could be the agent of a fatal encounter. What happens is nothing but the conscious form taken by the case: the miracle of being able to invent a meaning.

Marina Guerrisi