Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews
Movie Resources
Concert Reviews
Book Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

Back in the mid-'90s, when the Bosnian war was at its most hellish, a number of movies came out that attempted to speak to that horrifying spectacle. Grounded in surrealistic exaggeration, they explored the darkness of modern civilization and challenged audiences not to avert their eyes. Emir Kusturica's Underground and Srdjan Dragojevic's Pretty Village, Pretty Flame were the standouts and, for my money, rank as two of the best films of the decade. But there were a number of other fine movies to come out of the Balkan lands, and it looked like that part of the world might be fomenting its own New Wave. That all changed when the war ended, however. Kusturica joined a band, Dragojevic made a musical comedy called The Payback All-Star Revue that nobody ever saw, and Balkan cinema faded into the hinterland. It was as if nobody knew what to say without a war.

So I was curious when I found out the Gene Siskel Film Center was going to show a Bosnian film called _Fuse_. The storyline--small village thinks that Bill Clinton is coming to visit and tries to hide its ethnic divisions and criminal enterprises--seemed ripe for the surreal farce that Balkan cinema specialized in. Would Fuse be able to harness the black humor and perceptive filmmaking that had made its predecessors so compelling, or would the war's end and the existential ennui that followed rob Fuse of its power? The answer is yes.

The movie is wickedly funny in places. Its portrait of a village where everyone is on the take is mordant. One great scene involves a bootlegger of anything illegal settling up with the local cop. The two hand money back and forth at a furious pace, each giving the other his "cut" for everything under the sun. A later scene involves the same two men trying to figure out what they're going to do with the local brothel, given the need to make the town presentable. Their solution is to turn it into a "cultural center on the inter-entity boundary line." And a meeting between the Muslim mayor of a Bosnian town with the Orthodox mayor of a neighboring Serb village takes place in a cemetery, where the Bosnian mayor asks to "rent" Serbian refugees so it might appear that his town is integrated.

Fuse also retains some of the earlier films' brutal approach. In one scene, a tender moment ends with the shockingly unexpected explosion of a land mine. And a running storyline involves an older man who's going crazy because one of his sons went missing in the war. The old man talks to the missing son in several evocative scenes and eventually comes up with the idea to become a suicide bomber to alert the world of his plight.

Director Pjer Zalica doesn't just focus on the absurdity of life, however. The movie centers on a fireman named Faruk, who's the other son of the older man. Faruk is a good-hearted villager who doesn't mind when the mayor commands him and his partner to start working with their Serb counterparts. And when one of the Serbs asks him to buy Pampers for his baby, Faruk not only gladly complies but buys extras. This sense of camaraderie and potential community was nowhere to be found in the Balkan films of the '90s, and it's nice to see that black humor doesn't preclude tenderness and possibility.

The problem with Fuse, though, is that it veers too wildly between its emotional poles. At first, the Serbs and Bosnians hate each other's guts, but it's not long before they're drinking together and commiserating over their dishonest politicians. But just when you're getting used to that storyline, the film surprises you with a brutal stabbing. A hilarious teen choir's performance of The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" is followed by a powerful but maudlin re-telling of the missing son's death. I realize that Zalica is trying to capture the paradox of modern Bosnian life; but if you're going to juggle tones like he's trying to do, you better have absolute control of your material. Unfortunately, he doesn't. That becomes particularly problematic in the movie's final scenes, whose ending is telegraphed too early and then arrives on the back of a horribly bad version of "House of the Rising Sun" and some unnecessary emotional outbursts.

Still, Fuse is a potent portrait of where Bosnia is now, with enough laughs and drama to make for compelling viewing. You can't blame it for not living up to its predecessors. It opens Friday at the Film Center for a one-week run. 

J. Robert Parks  11/20/2005