And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Hope
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.--
Erich Fromm
When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na sluzbenom Putu 1985)
This feature is one of 5 best films coming from former Yugoslavia
Emir Kusturica’s second feature (following on from the wonderfully observed Do You Remember Dolly Bell?)opens in Sarajevo during the troubled years following Tito’s break with Stalin and the Soviet Cominform, from 1948 to 1952.
The title ''When Father Was Away on Business'' refers to a trip taken by the young hero's parent - not a business trip, but a journey to a communist work-correction camps . It also indicates the perspective from which the story is seen by young boy.
The background of the story is set in voice-over narrative by Mesa's six-year-old son Malik, whose best friend Joza's father was taken away by "men in leather coats" after proclaiming publicly "I'd rather have Russian shit than American cake!" It is from young Malik's view that the story is primarily told. His understanding of the arrest of Joza's father is only that "it was something to do with Stalin."
Malik’s father, Mesha, criticizes a cartoon in the party newspaper, and as punishment is sent to work correction camp.The fact that Mesha’s brother-in-law, a stern, bureaucratic Communist Party official, shares Mesha’s interest in the same young women only seals Mesha’s fate. As a result of his misdemeanor he is sent work in a mine, while the rest of his family is left to manage on its own (They will eventually later join Mesha in this work-correction camp in small eastern town in Bosnia).
Film follows the family through this crisis and then their return back to Sarajevo to some kind of normality again; it also captures some of Malik's formative experiences, including his first stirrings of love . "When Father Was Away on Business" ("Otac na sluzbenom putu") is winner of the Golden Palm at 1985 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in Sarajevo (1954), Emir Kusturica is one of cinema's most distinct voices. A two-time Palme d'Or winner, he is a master of Magical Realism, blending tragedy with farce, war with weddings, and mud with gold. His films are loud, chaotic symphonies of Balkan life, often accompanied by the frenetic brass beats of theNo Smoking Orchestra.
When Father Was Away on Business is a seminal work of the "New Yugoslav Cinema" (also known as the Sarajevo School). Winning the Palme d'Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival and receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, it solidified Emir Kusturica's reputation as a world-class auteur.
The film is set in Yugoslavia during the early 1950s, a period of immense political tension following the Tito–Stalin split of 1948.
Historical Context: The Informbiro Period
The "business trip" mentioned in the title is a darkly ironic euphemism. In reality, the father, Mesa (Miki Manojlović), has been arrested and sent to a labor camp.
The Tito-Stalin Split: In 1948, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Communist Information Bureau (Informbiro). Tito chose a path independent of the Soviet Union, leading to a domestic purge of "Stalinists" (real or perceived).
The Political Atmosphere: The film captures the paranoia of the era. A casual remark or a misplaced joke could lead to imprisonment on Goli Otok (the "Barren Island" labor camp).
Mesa’s Crime: Mesa is denounced by his own brother-in-law, Zijo, not necessarily out of ideological fervor, but because of a messy personal entanglement involving a mistress.
Legacy
When Father Was Away on Business was a breakthrough because it was one of the first major films to openly criticize the Informbiro era’s repression. It moved beyond the "Partisan Film" genre that had dominated Yugoslav cinema for decades, opting instead for a messy, human, and tragicomic exploration of history.
It remains a cornerstone of Balkan cinema, balancing local cultural specificities with a universal story about the loss of innocence.
Do You Remember Dolly Bell ? (1981)
Emir Kusturica's first film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? is a bittersweet comedy set in the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s. The film, which won the Golden Lion Prize at the 1981 Venice Film Festival, is both a coming of age story and a tribute to the city of Sarajevo, long before it was devastated by civil war. To the chagrin of his strict Communist father (Slobodan Aligrudic), sixteen-year old Dino (Slavo Stimac) is more into hypnosis and self-help mantras than Marxist ideology. He recites the phrase "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better" and sings in a new band mandated by the local Eastern European bureaucracy as they relax the Communist grip and allow some influence of Western culture.
Dino's family of six live in a cramped one-room house while they wait for state housing. The father drinks excessively and the family is poor. This is underscored when, during a visit to relatives, the youngest boy makes a point of saying how much he wishes he had a bicycle like the one he sees in the relative's home. Through Dino's relationship with Sonny, an unsavory pimp, he meets a cabaret singer and prostitute Dolly Bell (Ljiljana Blagojevic), named after a stripper in an Italian film they had seen recently at the Culture Club. Dolly is forced by Sonny to wait in the attic of Dino's home until he returns and Dino is a passive onlooker as a band of delinquent boys take their turn with her.
Dino's sweet innocence captivates the young girl, however, and the two form a bond that results in Dino's sexual initiation and first love affair. Dino has to cope with his father's illness, a lung cancer that has become life-threatening and their days together reveal a much mellower man who tells Dino he knew about the girl in the loft and no longer disapproves his using hypnosis and auto-suggestion. While Do you Remember Dolly Bell? lacks the polish and cinematic flair of Kusturica's later work, it is an honest and intelligent film that avoids sentimentality and provides compelling insight into what it meant to grow up in Eastern Europe during the sixties.
.jpg)
.jpg)