a very "happy" film
- Black Cat, White Cat review by CP Customer
The film is very energetic and funny and full of a zest for life, and just plain mad at times. Yet you still care for the characters, and the story, in all the chaos, does have a direction to it - the director pulls it off brilliantly.
I very much enjoyed it and it also left me in a good mood for the day
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Quite insane -- but in a good way.
- Black Cat, White Cat review by MS
The other two review said the film was quite crazy, and they're right. The plot -- such as it was -- was rambling and weird, and yet it kept your attention all the way through. The characters were attractive and convincingly human, navigating their way through the mad onrush of events. And the music was wonderful. I didn't expect to even like it -- but I loved it.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Bizarre, hugely enjoyable fabulist romp
- Black Cat, White Cat review by MH
Great characters, a real sense of place and the oddities of life in the Balkans.
Even the occasional overlong episode ends up forming part of a wholly enjoyable patchwork.
A boisterous must-see film, with a must-hear soundtrack.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Crazy, funny and fairy tale like
- Black Cat, White Cat review by CP Customer
I loved this film! It's full of crazy characters, wonderful story telling and lively, energetic music. I need that soundtrack in my life! The story is so wonderfully enacted you could watch without the subtitles and still understand everything that happens. I would recommend this to anyone.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Black Cat, White Cat
- Black Cat, White Cat review by sh
sometime you'll hold a story or event from your own life so close to your heart, kept in the chamber of the mouth to tell instantly because its full of wild things, happenstance, things someone said that felt like it was the first time anyone said it, the physical movement of a slip, the roaring of blood to your face as you cried with laughter, the theme-park gut drop as you went pale with fear. the full story rounded into a perfectly sanded sphere you love regaling.
thats Black Cat, White Cat.
a pig eating a car, a dead man strung to a rail crossing pole with an umbrella, a man cleaning shite off himself with a live goose, a bride escaping her own wedding by hiding in a fake tree stump, a dead body wearing an ice bag facemask, a giant driving around a decorated shed on the back of a yute.
Kusturica's vision is one massively of completely charmed chaos, where it feels like there are about 40 people behind the camera choreographing the scene, but they fell asleep on the take they used. its so pulsating, rhythmic. weird and funny. theres almost nothing as completely defined and directed, yet so shambolic and physical.
its like he sold his soul to the gods of timing.
his kitchen-sinked gypsy aesthetics feel like a themepark made in a scrapyard. hoses, broken kettles, upended tables. a complete dust-junk heaven.
if you ever wanted to see and feel the chaotic miasma of a shotgun wedding, Black Cat White Cat gives you: a shotgun wedding, a double wedding, death, resurrection and a sleeping child and an old man being launched out a car on their wheelchair with a goat.
genuinely the most joyous experience ive had all year watching films. this is so so fucking funny man. probably shouldve been as big as Delicatessen (1991) tbh
please watch this
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Send in the clowns
- Black Cat, White Cat review by TE
Another Kusturica film that has not aged well. 'Black Cat White Cat' is a kind of Balkan 'Carry On...' film, but with ruder jokes. A typical routine sees an obese woman singer concluding her act by pulling a six-inch nail from a plank with her buttocks. There is a lot of circus-style falling over and knocking things about and smashing crockery.
There is a constant wild energy that simply gets tiresome after a while. You get the impression that the entire cast must have been jacked up on mega-amphetamines before each scene. There is so much slapstick that some of the 'slap' does 'stick', giving the occasional belly laugh, but such moments are drowned in the self-consciously madcap mayhem (much as the film's villain is almost drowned in liquidised shit at the end...don't worry, he wipes himself clean with live geese).
Successful farce has some underlying structure, and makes effective use of changes of pace. This film just exhausts without giving enough back.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.