Director: Emir Kusturica
Written by Emir Kusturica & Gordan Mihic
Cinematography: Vilko Filac
Music: Goran Bregovic
Production Design by Miljen Kreka Kljakovic
Costume Design by Mirjana Ostojic
Film Editing: Andrija Zafranovic
Produced by Mirza Pasic & Harry Saltzman
Assistant Directors: Maja Gardinovacki & Dragan Kresoja
Sound: Srdan Popovic
Makeup: Halid Redzebasic
Production Manager: Jelena Silajdzic
Produced by Forum Sarajevo/Ljubavny Film/Television of Sarajevo

 

From Emir Kusturica, director of "When Father Was Away on Business" and "Arizona Dream," comes the epic drama of Perhan, an orphaned Gypsy boy with telekinetic powers who leaves his small town and joins a strange caravan of misfits on a journey to Italy -- a trek which includes many magical stops and fascinating, surrealistic moments. From the opening scene in the movie, where we see the backside of a bride who is crying, to the next few moments when she is pelting her drunk husband-to-be and the camera pans to a mental patient who is rubbing the top of his head and explaining (quite poetically) the horrors of the mental hospital where he was made to "eat lightbulbs" (remind anyone of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"...?!), the viewer begins to sense that this deceptively simple small-town setting is actually quite complex.

The movie could, perhaps, appropriately be divided into two parts. During the first half of the film, we see Perhan living in a small village with his grandmother, crippled sister, and compulsive uncle. The story has its beginning with Merdzan, Perhan's uncle, who is quickly becoming the ruin of the family by his gambling debts. When the grandmother brings home a turkey for Perhan (a recurring symbol throughout the movie), Merdzan grows indignant and, judging from his outburst, seems already on the brink of madness. Like Merdzan, Perhan also is very passionate, but he has a gentle respect for and awe of life which makes him his grandmother's favorite. Several times during the movie, he takes up his accordion to play Gypsy folk-songs at her bidding (which, taken alone, make the soundtrack a find -- if you can lay hands on it...). Perhan seems to have inherited a profound respect for the honest Gypsy tradition which his grandmother represents. Perhaps this is why he possesses at least a little of the mystical powers that are more strongly realized in his grandmother. It is during this first portion of the film that Perhan falls in love with a local townsgirl, Azra. When her mother disallows the marriage because of Perhan's perceived inability to financially provide for her daughter, Perhan becomes focused on trying to win the favor of Azra's mother. Even Perhan's grandmother chips in and tries to offer money and gifts, but Perhan is rebuffed because Azra's mother feels that her daughter is worth millions. In desperation, Perhan decides to hang himself. And so, he ties the old (dilapidated) church bell rope to his neck and dangles from the tower, ringing the bell and screaming. One of the local townspeople (who is, at that moment, trying to jump over his shadow) hears Perhan screaming about how he loves Azra; he runs to the church bell, cuts Perhan down, and takes him home to his grandmother, saying, "I won't tell you where I found him..." Not more than two minutes later, Perhan's grandmother begs him to play the accordion for her. The man who saved Perhan ecstatically exclaims that the night is romantic. And so he and Perhan's grandmother dance and then later spend the night together. Such is the crazy, whimsical rush of the first half of the movie.

Midway through the movie, however, the focus dramatically shifts and does not return to the light-heartedness with which it began. This shift is marked by the advent of Ahmed, king of the Gypsies, who rides into town in a convertible to collect a host of crippled children and dwarfs to take back to his encampment. After getting into trouble with Ahmed's brothers over his failure to pay his gambling debts, Merdzan is angered that his grandmother has no money and, in a rage, destroys the house and kills Perhan's turkey. In the midst of such flurry, Perhan's grandmother is called to Ahmed's house to use her Gypsy powers to save Ahmed's dying son. The next morning, Ahmed arrives to offer payment for the saved life of his child. When his money is refused, he then offers to take Perhan's sister to a hospital in Rome so that her leg can be cured. Because the little girl is scared to leave alone, Perhan says that he will go with her and watch over her, but, when they get to the hospital, Perhan instead joins Ahmed and travels back to Ahmed's Gypsy shanty beneath the interstate to take up living in an abandoned bus. When he learns of Ahmed's corrupt system of gain, Perhan at first clings to his integrity, but eventually, his dream of winning Azra causes him to fall into thievery. Before long, Perhan is running the Gypsy camp single-handedly, stashing his great wealth in a secret hiding place. He returns home to visit his grandmother and marry Azra, but, when he finds Azra pregnant (possibly by Merdzan), his corruption gives way to disillusionment, and, as he confesses to Azra, "I have been lying so long I don't believe anything anymore". It is during this visit that Perhan begins to wrestle with the idea of fate and whether God has, indeed, as his grandmother predicted, turned His back on him. When Perhan returns to the Gypsy camp, the movie takes its fast turn downward into its tragic end.

"Time of the Gypsies" is a visual feast -- it revels in a surrealism of sound, element, scene, and story that cohere in such unison as I have never before seen. The layers of Perhan's adventures are many, and they speak volumes about the nature of the human heart, the loss of innocence, the difficulty of growing up, the attaining and losing of one's dreams, and what it is to live both honestly and dishonestly.

What most fascinated me about this movie were the two dream sequences that Perhan experiences as he passes into sleep. Of all the movies I have ever seen (including Dreams, by Akira Kurasowa), "Time of the Gypsies" does the best job of creating the most authentic dream-like experience in the viewer -- that is, I felt as though I were actually watching a dream inside someone's head (an amazing concept explored in movies like "Dreamscape", "City of Lost Children", and "Until the End of the World").

The sheer beauty of these dream scenes both photographically and conceptually, is remarkable, and, what is more, each dream serves its distinct place in the movie. Immediately before the first dream (during the first segment in the movie), Perhan has just finished asking his grandmother about his mom and how pretty she was (she had died during the birth of his sister). Though he has been jilted in his love of Azra by her mother, he dreams of their wedding (pictured above). It is an almost mythic event, and the transposition of images is so ethereal that it is easily one of the highlights of the entire film.

The second dream contains less revel and more of the disturbing images of madness, depravity, and distance from loved ones. Because it is more fragmented than the first dream (and, indeed, precisely because it is a dream), incoherency would seem a danger, but Emir somehow pulls it all together. The dream begins with Perhan waking up in a bus and looking out the window at himself and a villager who is helping him strap on his accordion. As the music begins, the man dances around in the Gypsy encampment. We then see Perhan's grandmother who is standing in front of a cathedral, walking back and forth, tossing a ball into the air, and chanting to herself in bemusement. Behind her, a giant, rusted gas-pump slides back on forth on the pavement. (Perhaps it is a symbol of Perhan's decaying innocence...?) Later in the dream, this gas-pump is brought home by Perhan (he has been considering returning to his hometown), and, when he arrives and sets it inside the house, he expects to be welcomed by his grandmother. Instead, she embraces the gas-pump (!) and completely ignores Perhan. A few scenes later, the grandmother throws the gas-pump into the river where it seems to collapse and sink as it drifts away... Thereafter, the dream becomes a breathless smattering of images -- his childhood home catches fire and lifts itself away from its foundation to hover above him (similar to how Merdzan destroyed the house), his sister (now healed) dances around a table on which rests a scale model of the Vatican. Perhan awakes from his dream as a group of police are arresting the Gypsies.

During many times (particularly the Charlie Chaplain scene and the various scenes containing the floating bridal veil imagery), these dream sequences are indistinguishable from the story (movies such as "12 Monkeys" and "Total Recall" employ this devise as well, blurring the line between reality and dream). Indeed, the entire movie, even the sense of setting, seems dream-like. Take, for instance, Ahmed's camp underneath the freeway. When it is viewed from the front, it is a wall of make-shift houses, trailers, and buses with the freeway arching overhead and the city beyond it hazy in the distance. When viewed outward, there is a huge sandy field (reminiscent of a desert -- possibly a symbol of moral desiccation) and train tracks which stretch off into a cloudy and dark distance.

After I finished watching this movie the first time, I felt a certain sense of hopelessness and despair. Perhaps it was the somewhat graphic rape scene midway through the movie. Perhaps it was the fact that the story ends with Perhan's son who has turned out to be a thief like his father (he even steals from his dead father). Or maybe it was because of the general moral depravity of the second half of the film -- the fact that there is no redemption except in Perhan's revenge (which could, itself, even be considered an atrocity). With the exception of Perhan's grandmother and a few of her fellow townspeople, all of the Gypsy characters are lunatics, alcoholics, child-stealers, or pickpockets. Everyone knows that Gypsies have historically been (and, indeed, in some areas of the world, still are) considered among the outcasts of society. This movie does nothing to displace these prejudices. We don't even really gain any insight (from their life experiences) as to why all of Emir's gypsies have no choice but to become thieves and liars. While these things do not lessen one's awe of the film, the viewer does come away with a sense of dissatisfaction -- that maybe the movie promised something that it didn't deliver. Take, for instance, the scene where Perhan has returned to his hometown and ends up "whoring" at the local bar. This is a powerful moment; in it, we see, perhaps objectively for the first time, Perhan's dramatic loss of the innocence and passion that he had during the first part of the movie. His grandmother's rejection is also very poignant, and yet, Emir seems to drop these things as quickly as he presents them -- that is, the interest Emir had in his characters at the beginning of the film feels as if it is tapering off. Perhan quickly leaves all of these experiences behind (almost as if unfazed by them) and pulls Azra into his miserable, lifeless pit. Emir is eager to do away with Azra, and, understandably so -- he has made her reappearance in the film a heart-wrenching experience; Perhan's rejection is surpassingly cruel, and Azra cowers under it. I think that Azra could have been as important as the bar scene and Perhan's grandmother in serving to counterpoint his life in the city. It is during that moment that the movie needed to take a turn back into its initial inspiration at the film's beginning. Instead, Azra remains a rather under-developed and feeble character, as do most of the characters here at the end (consider the way Ahmed becomes a non-character after his heart-attack).

But it is hard to criticize this movie. It is so large. And, redemption or not, everything Emir presents works. He doesn't even fall into the temptation of explaining all of his metaphors (and many of them are quite dense). During one of the last lines of the movie, Perhan is told that "life is only a mirage". If that is so, Emir has set us in a beautiful canoe and has given us a decaying fish with which to paddle as we drift down the streams of that mirage. At times we wince, we are repulsed, and yet we row. As the poet Anne Sexton said, "it is the awful rowing toward God."

Cast (in credits order)

Davor Dujmovic....Perhan
Bora Todorovic....Ahmed
Ljubica Adzovic....Grandmother
Husnija Hasimovic....Merdzan
Sinolicka Trpkova....Azra
Elvira Sali....Danira
Zabit Memedov
Suada Karisik
Predrag Lakovic
Mirsad Zulic
Ajnur Redzepi
Sedrije Halim
Saban Rojan
Branko Djuric
Edin Rizvanovic
Marjeta Gregorac
Boris Juh
Ibro Zulic
Advija Redzepi
Emir Cerin
Irfan Jagli
Julijana Demirovic
Nazifa Ahmetovic
Albert Mumutovic
Jadranka Adzovic