Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 8 No. 12, April 2004
Brian Bernard Karl
Capturing Kusturica:
On Gocic's _The Cinema of Emir Kusturica_
Goran Gocic _The Cinema of Emir
Kusturica: Notes from the Underground_ London: Wallflower
Press,
2002 ISBN 1903364167 192 pp. Emir Kusturica career has
been a rare recent example of a latter-day film director of
an auteuristic mode who manages to cross-over -- at least to
some degree -- to audiences at the fringes of art house
venues. Critics have dealt with various aspects of his
output, celebrating or attempting to deflate a growing
reputation built on a series of films that have grown in
production value (and budget), as well as shifted in tone
from an almost neo-realist style with light touches of
magical realism embedded, to more frenetic exercises with
cartoon-ish plot-lines and characters who sprawl into the
realm of caricature and *mise-en-scenes* that can be seen as
either ambitious or over-the-top. Only in the last two
years, however, have book-length monographs devoted to
Kusturica and his work seen the light of day, one being,
Goran Gocic's _The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the
Underground_, part of a series called, 'Directors' Cuts',
which 'focus on the work of the most significant
contemporary international film-makers, illuminating the
creative dynamics of World Cinema', according to the book's
back-jacket blurb. The 'World Cinema'
category, while potentially too arbitrary and diminishing a
label, could also serve as a likely one to launch an initial
foray into considering Kusturica's evolving praxis, since he
has very much moved from being a type of regional exemplar
to an global stage where he manages to still represent
something typical to his (former) Yugoslav origins while
appropriating from (and responding to) ideas of more
internationally developed style and technique in film. And
certainly the accomplishments (and controversies) of
Kusturica's career make a longer, more in-depth study of him
more than overdue. Gocic's book is, in one
sense, a book that tries to do too much. There is a plethora
of information within in it on a range of subjects including
some basic elements of Kusturica's personal biography
(especially his formative years with regard to film),
Kusturica's production history, Kusturica's films
themselves, as well as various contexts of contemporary
feature films with which some overlap is claimed for
Kusturica by the author. Early on, however, it
becomes clear that most of these contexts will remain only
summary in the use Gocic makes of them. The mass of
information yields surprisingly few detailed considerations
of any specific topics. In this sense, Gocic's attempt at
explicating what might be some phenomenology of Kusturica
and his film work does not do enough, falling short on its
own goals, unable or unwilling to go beyond quickie claims,
and often glib and tossed off theorizing. No doubt some of this is
due to the author's choice of style -- an attempt at
displaying an that is knowing but breezy and fast-paced,
skipping from trope to trope with little apparent interest
in structuring coherent discussions, much less pointed
arguments -- despite the periodic, casual sprawl into
jargon-rich moments of critical posturing. One attribute --
and possibly cause -- of this style, is the author's
predilection for fannish ejaculation, signaling the
presumption on his part that Kusturica is not only
worthwhile as a subject of study (reasonable enough) but
also a figure worthy of a mythologizing of the most
over-reaching hype from a hero-hungry press and Kusturica
himself. By dint of mere repetition
and the simple taking up of a descriptive history (however
fragmented) of Kusturica's film work itself, some sense of
measure is gained of the work overall. But any larger
contextualization gets lost in the details of Gocic's stabs
at analysis and his tendency toward a partisanship that
often approaches cheerleading on behalf of the
director. The author's apparent
knowledge of East European cinema is wasted with only
sporadic, passing references to exemplars of it and an
apparent disinterest in generating a greater geocultural
regional setting for understanding Kusturica. For the reader
with a lack of familiarity with cinema or other recent
artistic phenomena from Yugoslavia or the Czech Republic,
this book will provide little additional information since
often no more than a title of a film or sometimes a title
and director will be mentioned without indications of from
where or when the referenced film stems or even what a
particular film might be about. Likewise, Gocic's approach
to the political background and possible interpretations of
Kusturica's work and attitude. Though Gocic seems to possess
much knowledge about the ins and outs of what has gone on in
the political maneuverings of the region since the breakup
of Yugoslavia, little ultimate insight seems to cohere in
his read on how Kusturica himself might be read through his
career -- praxis, again, seems a suitable term here, since
Kusturica has deliberately chosen settings and narratives
that develop around political issues (e.g. _Underground_ and
the earlier _When My Father Was Away on Business_) and has
alternately coyly courted, tersely dodged, and
inflammatorily acted out through the attention of a more and
more attentive media. Gocic does better in
explaining occasional focused socio-cultural phenomena such
as the East European concept of *sevdah*, a sort of ecstatic
melancholy associated with a specific musical genre, but he
ultimately muddies it when considering Kusturica's take on
it. Much worse, in referencing occasional, arbitrarily
chosen films from other, usually more Western locales, a
spotty conceptualization of more global cinematic practice
leaves this consideration of Kusturica's output even more
isolated. His comparison of Kusturica's use of *Naturisch*
non-professional actors to that of Pasolini is close enough
perhaps if not fully apt, as are the connections he suggests
among Kusturica's work and that of Bunuel and Fellini. The
suggestion that Kusturica's attitude toward nature and
'Slavic mysticism . . . owes a lot' to Tarkovsky is a
different story since, even if imagery borrowed from
Tarkovsky abounds in Kusturica's work, the tone and theme of
the context in which these appropriations become embedded
within Kusturica's work are notably different. Likewise,
Gocic's assertion that Kusturica's take on spiritual faith
as demonstrated through his films' playful magic realism
corresponds in any substantial way with that of Paradzhanov
(90) is exaggerated at best. Gocic's take on music in
film is weak to a point that is embarrassing, since he
dwells at some length on the use of music in Kusturica's
work (and digresses to celebrate Kusturica's own role as a
musician -- admittedly in the context of the film Kusturica
made documenting that band's tour, though the address to the
film itself is minor. The 'inside' information he has on the
relationship between Kusturica and some of his musical
collaborators is only tangentially pertinent and defaults to
the arena of gossip and fandom. Elsewhere in Gocic's
exposition of music in film, the crude claim he puts forward
-- that Indian directors 'have developed an instrument to
express . . .' -- glaringly spotlights his lack of knowledge
of musics in other locales and their various uses in film
(as it also spotlights his uncritical/unproblematized
attitude toward musics of the world and 'world music' in
general). Even worse is the
essentializing of various religious groups' filmic responses
in which Gocic indulges when discussing Kusturica and
casting is ignorant, meaningless and downright shameful:
'While Protestant cultures, it seems, cannot relate to the
problematic 'exploitation' of the handicapped, Catholic (or
even more Orthodox) cultures experience actors posing in
such roles as somehow phoney . . .' (64). Similar questions arise in
Gocic's attitude toward Kusturica's own figure, especially
in relation to the film industry. What is the 'top league'
which Kusturica has 'penetrated' (44)? This would seem to be
Gocic's notion of international directors who manage to
produce popular films with budgets approaching the lower end
at least of Hollywood productions, albeit with some artistic
credibility retained. There is no attempt to examine the
notions of integrity to which he refers, beyond his vague
implication of the corruptness of the system of
internationalized production (and of distribution as well --
since Gocic also criticizes attendees of film festivals and
other audiences and critics). He does spend two or three
pages considering the significance of various European
festival's support of Kusturica's work, but his speculations
remain just that -- speculations, without any real
investigation of the facts according to principles involved,
nor with these speculations yielding any substantive
conclusions. When Gocic isn't presenting others' theories on
the politics behind Festival decisions regarding Kusturica
(only to knock these strawmen down with simple assertions of
his own), he defaults too easily into characterizing the
festivals as somehow agentive themselves, as if the
institutions themselves make decisions monolithically,
without the contingent political processes that no doubt
often inform them. More generally, any real engagement with
issues of reception could have saved the book from reading
most like an extended, somewhat informed account by a fan.
Any of Gocic's impulses toward a critical stance are
overwhelmed by much stronger impulses to mythologize
Kusturica in terms such as: 'came back a hero'. Gocic embraces the
iconoclast he sees in Kusturica's posturings and his work,
but he does not investigate the director's relationship with
the Hollywood movie industry he insists Kusturica is somehow
countering. Only one of many such claims is Gocic's
statement that though Kusturica 'has been backed by Western
producers . . . the narrative preferences in his films are
still positioned and kept in contrast to the most ruling
industrial, semiological and ideological standards'
(161). Some other interesting
ideas generated by Gocic are lost during the piecemeal
approach in which the author picks them up -- and lets them
drop. A consideration of the filmed motif of cigarettes or
smoking in Kusturica's films, for instance, as well as of
'animals', become lumped into careering lists of their
various (and often divergent) purported symbolic import and
are thus obscured and over-burdened with the detritus of the
author's random and murky observations. In another stylistic tic,
which has decided impact on the book's content, it is
difficult to decide which is more distracting: the author's
hyperbole in proclaiming certain truths or the checked
hyperbole ('systematically challenging practically all of
the 'superior' attributes' (161). Much of the author's more
intriguing observations become awash in this sea of
confusion, as in Gocic's thrown away claim that Kusturica
'rather closes the traditions on which he bases his work,
seeing them as the doors to their conclusions'
(162). Further obscuring the
sometimes intriguing perspectives offered to approaching
Kusturica is a extremely poor editing of the author's use of
the English language. Hardly a paragraph goes by without
awkward or mixed metaphors ('How the filmmaker manages to
keep on carving notches by gathering all these successive
laurels' [132]), irrelevant asides, overstated
rhetorical locutions, bad grammar ('here are a running gag'
107), and word choices that are odd or even wrong. Even a
mediocre proof-reading would have helped eliminate some
confusion caused with typographical errors (example on page
83: 'transfigured' instead of 'transcend', 'grovel' in lieu
of 'gravel', 'confided' in lieu of 'confined', and
'satanised' where the author apparently meant 'sanitized'),
but the entire text could use not only basic copy-editing,
but also a thorough rewrite. This extends not only to
on-going grammatical sloppiness, but also lapses and
contradictions in logic, all of which, again, contribute to
undermining the sometimes insightful identification of
specific attributes within Kusturica's output that are
salient. If these moments of insight were supported so that
they achieved a greater momentum, the book might have
produced some sense of larger analysis. Perhaps the author's
intent is to produce a document whose free-wheeling behavior
mimics that of Kusturica himself; it lacks, however, not
only the bravura and finesse of Kusturica's work, but also
its coherence and its relative rigorousness of
thought. Gocic's poor rhetorical
turns in English at times reach to levels nearing
incomprehensibility, as in the following passage, part of
the conclusion of the book: 'One can alternatively
define transgression as stepping over a lower limit, as
breaking the rules downward. We understand transgression in
this respect as a kind of negative transcending. Its basic
characteristic in Kusturica's case is its direction -- it
starts from the 'core' to be seen at 'periphery', from
'superior' to inhabit 'inferior', from 'higher' to reach
'lower', but only to claim those back for humanity'
(161). Or this: 'Kusturica's hero
is someone a world apart, yet symbolically accepted and
inaugurated into post-modern imagery' (161). And later: 'the
prevailing dark tone reduced Kusturica's potential break in
Hollywood practically to zero' (164). Beyond these details in
the text, generalizations and unsupported attributions
abound: How does Gocic know, for example, that 'the audience
subscribes to his view in spite of its own prejudices'?
(101). Is Kusturica's preservation of ''natural'
ambiguities' truly a 'negation of genre cinema'? And if so,
what is the actual significance for the work? Are the
supposedly 'peculiar destinies' of 'Kusturica's actors'
after filming really relevant to a reading of the characters
they portray? Is either sleepwalking or flying in a glider
really an instance of the supernatural? These types of
assertions are in keeping with other questionable, arbitrary
claims such as: 'In other words, unlike *sevdah*, which is a
completely organic element in Kusturica's films, the
supernatural is more of an accessory.' Or: 'The preference
for the sick anti-hero over the normal and healthy also
arrived in Hollywood' (160). Gocic's statements often
beg more questions than they answer, as when he states: 'If
we want to confine ourselves to the art of moving images, we
have to explore 'underground' cinema to find more radical
and consequential films of transgression' (161). This
underscores the lack of any clearly defined schema by which
Gocic might be measuring his judgments in presenting
Kusturica as some sort of iconoclast -- save the simple
assertion that Kusturica's oeuvre -- and attitude -- somehow
works against (while sometimes operating within) the
Hollywood system -- however vaguely defined that is in
relation to the larger realm of international cinema by
later-day *auteurs*. The vague allusion to a
field of activity (experimental or 'underground' cinema)
which remains totally unexplicated, calls attention to the
lack of a larger framing of Kusturica's work within
historical cinematic practice on the part of the author.
Such references call for a more explicit and determined
reading in how productive certain of Kusturica's stylistic
choices can be -- or do not end up being -- for instance,
even a slight investigation into the 'numerous
contradictions and oxymorons [that] manifest
formally in Kusturica's films' (161). By analyzing the recurring
theme of nostalgia he identifies as frequently engaged with
by Kusturica, Gocic might have gotten more to the heart of
both how the films are meant to function -- and how they are
actually read. But he invests considerably more time to
embracing instead his own recurring but vague references to
'ethno-cinema' as a base context from which Kusturica is
operating (and by which Gocic seems to mean to have it both
ways: indulging in exoticism and critiquing others' supposed
essentializing). The only specific examples he offers to
define this category are a handful of big budget Hollywood
films involving Native Americans. The pursuit of certain
themes in conceptualization and/or production or at least
more substantial quotes from Kusturica or some of his many
significant collaborators (e.g. writers, directors of
photography, composers) could have shed more light on the
processes and intentions that went into producing his work.
The press release for the book hails the author's use of
exclusive interviews with Kusturica, but little apparent use
is made of them, since most quotes are taken from other
publications (and are often accompanied by a glib, if
ambivalent, tendency toward superficial
psychoanalysis). There is an oddly parallel
publication in the recent _Emir Kusturica_ (2002) by Dina
Iordanova, another film critic who attempts to tackle
Kusturica and his work in the British
Film Institute's
'World Directors' series of monographs. Like Gocic,
Irodanova's take tends toward a history of production,
sporadically sprawling into a cataloging of various
components of the work. More organized overall -- her
chapter titles of 'The Man', 'The Film', 'The Artistry', and
'The Ideology' (the chapter on Ideology is particularly
focused) are more immediately accessible and relatively more
coherent, actually containing a greater quantity of direct
considerations of the material of Kusturica's films
themselves and their possible interpretations. Iordanova is
strongest in her consideration of intertextual reference as
it appears in Kusturica, with relatively detailed examples
from film, but also from visual art. At least, she is
certainly stronger than Gocic, who also attempts at least a
short list of quotes and allusions in Kusturica's work but
with no depth or apparent direction. On the negative side,
Iordanova, too, succumbs to the superficial psychoanalysing
game, while also checking her impulses in that direction.
She is especially maddening in acknowledging some issues
more explicitly than Gocic, but still refusing to deal with
them, as in her deliberately unexplored reference to
Kusturica's widely noted filmic misogyny. The problem of genre is
something both writers trip over: Kusturica is referred to
by both writers as representing several different categories
of film definition, among them pre-modern, post-modern,
baroque, and magical realist. And certainly, none of these
must be exclusive of the others, but neither authors'
invocation of them is particularly productive in
understanding what the result in Kusturica's work is. The
failure to consider audience reception to any substantive
degree is one indulged in by both authors, despite
occasional unsubstantiated invocation of it to bolster a
claim. More sober and steady
throughout, Iordanova provides a basic entry point to
Kusturica's place in contemporary cinema to a slight degree
more than Gocic's sometimes amusing, often distracting,
occasionally annoying and even incoherent sprawl into the
subject. But neither effort digs into the issues within and
surrounding the film work itself. For that, readers will
have to wait for another round with this admittedly
challenging subject. New York, USA Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2004 Brian Bernard Karl,
'Capturing Kusturica: On Gocic's _The Cinema of Emir
Kusturica_', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 12, April 2004
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n12karl>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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