Emir Kusturica: Life is a Miracle

I had never watched a film by Emir Kusturica before, I  had heard he was good but I was totally unprepared for what was coming. Life is a Miracle is a great film, better than most I have seen in recent years, it made me think: wow, Fellini is alive! Kusturica fans, I read later, are not so excited with Life is a Miracle because they feel Kusturica uses the same "tricks" over and over again and should renew himself, move forward. This being my first Kusturica film, I have some difficulty with this, why change what is great?, but I suppose they could be right.

Another subject is Kusturica is not a main stream film maker, hard to watch in the US. Buying the film is very difficult, reading about it too. Ebert doesn't have a word about it, unfortunately.

About the film: this is the official film description
What could be better for the village than a touristic railway ? And what could be worse for tourism than the war ? Busy with the construction of the railway, Luka closes the eyes on the war. He is specially worried by this donkey that blocks the train. But when his wife leaves him for a musician and Milos, his son, is called up for the military service, his life starts to look like a battlefield.
Fightings start soon in the station and Luka realizes he's at the heart of a true battlefield. Moreover, Milos is made prisoner. At this time he meets love in the person of Sabaha, a Muslim nurse. But Sabaha should serve as en hostage for Luka, and must be exchanged if he wants to get his son back.

But it fails to convey the first thing about this film. My feelings as I watched it were so many I can only try to list them:

- The first 3 minutes of the film are breathtaking. After such beginning we know we're in for something totally different.
- All the scenes with the music band are utterly hilarious and original.
- The war is portrayed as a nuisance almost, nothing that can actually stop the inner story of the characters, they'll keep going, whatever happens, seeing what they want to see: the attempts to continue to play chess by one character, who glues the chess pieces to the board with jam were totally out of this earth
- the main character is a beautiful, new actress who fills the screen. The cleaning the floor scenes are out of Fellini (Kusturica has stated his admiration for Fellini)
- the main male character is a wonderful actor moving easily from comedy to drama, a warm man, filled with broken dreams, sad and utterly human
- all the train scenes are beautiful and odd: the Mayor visiting on a limo that moves on train tracks is hilarious
- the wife is truly unbearable: is the actress that good or is she like that?
- the whole film is visually almost perfect
- war is reduced to what it is: insanity and misguided interests
- characters belong on stage but are our neighbors at the same time
- the film is long but I had a great time!

I hope I can articulate these thoughts on a decent Amazon review.

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