Zavet - Emir Kusturica (2007)

See the disappointed look on the boy's face? Well that was me after watching this film. I probably needed a friendly hand to hold me too.

I like Kusturica, I think he's a great director. He knows how to set up scenes and how to move the camera. I enjoyed most of his films. I've seen most of them. Time of the Gypsies has an amazing sensitivity to it. Underground is a major film. So is Life is a Miracle, where seemed to have become a grown-up director.

Promise me this is... boring. It seems as if someone was trying to copy Kusturica's style and stories and exaggerating everything until it turns absurd - not in the good-absurd way sometimes Kusturica manages to get away with. The boy and girl give the best performances (well the old man does too). Women don't have a very interesting role - prostitutes or wives. The music is... bad. I didn't like it. It doesn't have the subtlety, variation and effect like the music for Life is a Miracle, for example.

I understand now why this film wasn't broadly praised and distributed.


Zavet