Time of the Gypsies provides a glimpse into the life of authentic Gypsies of the Balkans that is without parallel in other films. Taking his cues from Luis Buñuel and John Ford, director Emir Kusturica gives us a film with mood, atmosphere and authenticity.

Historical Background: Emir Kusturica is one of the very small number of directors to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival more than once. His winning films were When Father Was Away on Business (1985) and Underground (1995). His first film was Guernica (1976) followed by Do You Remember Dolly Bell? in 1981. The film under review here, Time of the Gypsies (1988) followed directly on the heels of his first Cannes top prize winner and although it didn’t itself win the Palme d’Or, it earned Kusturica the top director award at Cannes. Arizona Dream followed in 1993 and then his second Cannes grand prize winner, Underground (1995). His more recent films include Black Cat, White Cat (1998), Super 8 Stories (2001), Life is a Miracle (2002), and The Nose (2002).

Kusturica was born in 1954 in Sarajevo to a Moslem Bosnian family, but his father disavowed his religion of birth in order to become a Yugoslavian Communist. Kusturica carries these conflicting elements of heritage in his personality. After grammar school, he moved with his family to Prague and remained there until 1978, when he returned to Yugoslavia to direct a couple of films for television. Kusturica presently lives in France, which, he describes as “the only country that loves the cinema truly.” Besides his success at directing, Kusturica is an accomplished actor and musician. Kusturica starred opposite Juliet Binoche and Daniel Auteuil in The Widow of Saint Pierre and has played bass guitar for a Serbian rock band called Zabranjeno Pusenje.

The Story: Many plot threads are opened up in this film but relatively few are effectively resolved and those that are resolved feel like they could just as well have been resolved in a different way. The protagonist is an adolescent Gypsy boy named Perhan (Davor Dujmovic) living in Yugoslavia. He lives with his grandmother (Ljubica Adzovic), his sister Danira (Elvira Sali), and his uncle Merdzan (Husnija Hasimovic). This is a hard-luck family to say the least. Perhan’s mother died giving birth to his younger sister and his father was a soldier who was merely passing through and has never been part of Perhan’s life. Perhan’s grandmother has raised him and is the light of his life. She is an honest and good-hearted woman while most of the Gypsies of their community are dishonest and engaged in various kinds of nefarious chicanery to survive. Perhan’s sister, Danira, is a gentle and sweet soul but a cripple. One of her legs is shorter than the other and causes her pain (from osteoporosis). Perhan loves his sister dearly, protecting her and cheering her up.

Perhan’s uncle, Merdzan, is a mental case – literally – since we learn at the film’s opening that he has escaped from a lunatic asylum. He is a totally irresponsible ne’er-do-well with a gambling addiction. He loses regularly and then demands money from his grandmother (who has none) to bail himself out from the reprisals of the hoodlums to whom he owes money. He comes home drunk one night demanding cash from his mother (Perhan’s grandmother) and rummages around the shack, smashing containers, trying to find any hidden money – to no avail. He then stumbles outside, throws a rope over the electric lines, attaches one end to the roof of the family home (which is little more than a shack), and the other end to his pickup truck. He then effectively hoists the shabby little structure about twelve feet into the air, leaving the grandmother, Perhan, and Danira homeless in the pouring rain. Later, Merdzan slaughters Perhan’s beloved pet turkey as well. This is the life with which these Gypsies must contend!

Perhan does have three advantages going for him. He has inherited a bit of his grandmother’s magical abilities. She is the community “healer” and highly regarded in that capacity. Perhan has powers of teleportation. He can make spoons or forks or tin cans move from a distance by the sheer force of his will. (This is a film that unabashedly mixes reality, surreal dream sequences, and magical elements.) Second, Perhan has his grandmother’s good influence and role model. Third, Perhan is the love interest of the gentle and lovely Azra (Sinolicka Trpkova). They learn how to kiss together (with a little modeling via the cinema) and fall in love. Standing in the way of their marriage, however, is Azra’s domineering and selfish mother who wants to sell her into marriage at the highest possible price. Perhan has nothing to offer in that respect. (It was common practice for Gypsies to sell their children either as babies for adoption, children to work as beggars, or teenage girls for marriage or prostitution.)

Most of the Gypsies live in poverty, but a few have become wealthy running small-time criminal syndicates, featuring beggars, prostitutes, pickpockets, and petty thieves. One such “successful” Gypsy is Ahmed (Bora Todorovic). Together with his two brothers, Ahmed runs the Gypsy scams across the border in the city of Milan in Italy, fleecing Italians and tourists by any means possible. Perhan’s grandmother saves the life of the son of Ahmed through her powers as a healer and Ahmed promises to repay her kindness by taking Danira to a hospital where she can get an operation to lengthen her short leg. Perhan is sent along to stay with Danira and provide her with moral support.

At the hospital, it turns out that Ahmed’s intentions are dishonorable. He has no interest in paying for the expensive operation and plans to put Danira to work as a crippled beggar. He lures Perhan away from his sister with promises of making a lot of money in Milan, which will allow Perhan to “purchase” Azra as a wife from her mother. Bit by bit, Perhan gets drawn into the Gypsy’s usual lot of petty criminal activities. He is easily victimized by Ahmed, since he trusts the devious but corrupt man like a father. When Ahmed breaks with his two brothers, for a time, Perhan moves up and becomes chief of operations for Ahmed’s crime ring.

Returning home in order to find more workers for the criminal activities (beggars, cripples, prostitutes), Perhan is now well-received by Azra’s mother (since he is well-dressed and loaded with cash) but discovers that Azra is already quite pregnant. There is considerable question as to whether it is Perhan’s child or that of his insane uncle Merdzan. After some negotiation, Perhan reluctantly agrees to marry Azra provided that her child will be sold after birth! Perhan’s grandmother, on the other hand, is unimpressed by his newfound “success,” having held to her hopes that her prized grandson would find some honest kind of life.

Returning to Milan, Perhan confronts his mentor, Ahmed, about various lies. Ahmed had promised Perhan a house, which Perhan has discovered is nonexistent. Perhan also now realizes that his sister never received the expected operation. Perhan’s twin motivations now become finding his missing sister and revenge. How this plays out the rest of the way for Perhan and the other characters I’ll leave for readers to discover from the film.

Themes: It’s hard to isolate a clear theme in this film. Perhaps it is the vicious cyclical nature of the Gypsy life that seemingly precludes any individual of the group from separating himself from the seedy, illicit activities by which they survive. Perhan tries desperately to follow the precepts of his grandmothers but gets sucked into the grimy underworld life dictated by Ahmed and his brothers. Perhan’s world feels like a trap. If he tries to live honestly, he’ll be unable to win the hand of his beloved Azra. If he turns to the lucrative but shady activities of Ahmed, he betrays his grandmother’s hopes for him. As he himself states at one point in the film, “Since I started myself lying, I don’t believe anyone.”

Or, perhaps the film’s message is a condemnation of the social circumstances that drive desperate and neglected people into lowlife activities as beggars, prostitutes, and thieves, in the tradition of such films as Threepenny Opera (1931) or Oliver Twist (1948). Or, perhaps the film has no message but, instead, is simply offering viewers the opportunity to observe the way of life of a rather insular, closed, and distinctive society that functions quite differently than our own. One cannot help but experience a sense of wonderment at the resilience of the Gypsies and their ability to find love and life amidst the squalor and destitution of their circumstances.

Production Values: The great wonder of this film is the way in which it captures and depicts the life of the legendary Gypsies to an extent that no other film has matched. The cast was comprised of real Gypsies with no prior acting experience. Learning lines was further complicated by the fact that all were also illiterate. The film is shot almost entirely in the Gypsy dialect called Romany, a language of which Kusturica knew nothing! The film reveals the shabby, subsistence level lives of these people without a lot of embellishment, other than the surrealist elements added by Kusturica to provide the feeling of a supernatural element in the lives of these folksy individuals. Vilko Filac, the cinematographer, successfully captures both the beauty and the ugliness of their lives. All of the ethnic peculiarities of these people are indulged and paraded before viewers in spectacular fashion. The lovely and authentic soundtrack by Goran Bregovic consists mainly of Romany folk songs and tunes played on a Gypsy accordion.

The dream sequences and supernatural elements provide some of the most enticing scenes of the film. There are lovely romantic scenes, levitating objects and people, wispy wedding veils signifying a deceased mother’s spiritual presence, and an ethereal white goose symbolizing the flight of the soul. Though the tale is grounded in the grungy dark mud of a difficult earthly existence, Kusturica manages to elevate the story though his surrealistic episodes into a magical domain.

Davor Dumovic, playing the films central character, was a gangling lad at the time, awkward, with thick glasses and, at times, a patch over one eye. Dumovic did have prior acting experience, having co-starred in Kusturica’s preceding film, When Father Was Away on Business. He provides an endearing performance that is then complemented by strong performances from the three main women of his life. Ljubica Adzovic gives us the kind of beneficent, supportive, and devoted grandmother than any boy would love to have. Sinolicka Trpkova was excellent as the love interest and very lovely in a couple of bare-breasted scenes. Elvira Sali as the crippled sister Danira was very touching as well.

Bottom-Line: Kusturica imbues this revelatory tale of the Gypsies with a dramatic intensity that confers an heroic, if tragic, aura to their existence. By being simultaneously lyrical and exotic, Time of the Gypsies makes for a rather mesmerizing experience. This is as close as you’ll come to being a Gypsy yourself. Time of the Gypsies is in Romany and Yugoslavian with English subtitles and has a running time of 142 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Yugoslavia:

Underground
When Father Was Away on Business

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age