Time of the Gypsies (1990)

In this luminous tale set in the area around Sarajevo and in Italy, Perhan, an engaging young Romany (gypsy) with telekinetic powers, is seduced by the quick-cash world of petty crime, which threatens to destroy him and those he loves.In some way, this film can be seen as a parallel with "Stalker" because of the telekinesis aspect. That is a small part of the overall picture, though, and may not be a fair to compare he two. Either way, this film is much more light-hearted and with a bit of the surreal.Whether the gypsy world is anything like the way the director makes it out to be, I have no idea. But based on this and his other films, it sure seems like a fun place to live.

This is a very unique film set in Saravejo and in Italy and it is not one easy to follow. It is full of magic realism as some of the characters have telekinetic powers. One of them is the naive Perhan, the protagonist of the movie. As the title suggests the story is told from gypsies eyes where using magic realism suits it perfectly knowing that this way to tell a tale is associated with a way to escape the hard reality, like on third world countries and among minorities. There is a lot of drinking and partying in the movie which is used as a tool to escape this reality. It shifts a lot in mood as it starts as a comedy and end in tragedy. When I wrote in the beginning that it is not easy to follow this movie is because the dreams and reality are all blended making it difficult to distinguish what is what. And it also makes a lot of suggestions with ambiguous interpretations like "who is the father of Azra's baby?"The story starts to go out of the track when the character seen as the grounded person in the movie, the grandmother, is the one who sends Perhan and Danira to Italy with Ahmed. There, the good guy Perhan is seduced buy money which corrupts him and disappoints the ones he cares about, especially his grandmother. The language spoken on the film, Romany, is a very peculiar from the gypsies.it is really hard to put in words how I was feeling after watching this masterpiece, I only know that I was feeling great to have seen it.

The opening tens of minutes described the family background and Perhan's dissolute life, also foreshadowing for Perhan breakaway, and laid the fatalistic foundation for the whole movie. Gypsies' innocent, unfettered national character, the unprivileged residents' seek joy amidst sorrow were comically interspersed saved the risk of this movie falling into boring. The grandmother spoiled and indulgenced Perhan, and the lack of education were the sorts of foretell that the family was about to suffer the doom.Perhan's run-away was always about the money, for his original and menial dream. Once a lonely boy expand his horizons, the faith will no longer unbreakable. People's involuntarily frustration and sadness can be carefully observed personal identity lost and moral depravity in the historical background. The decadence of moral, no more daydreams for the world, the degrading behavior under the coat of reasonable resin for became outstanding; the basic level was out of control would lead his fate into a domino effect, and the betray of his wife just pull the trigger for his revenge. At the end, in Perhan's funeral, Jesus statue falling apart onto the ground pulled the curtain of hopeless faith.Most of Kusturica's works have concerns for this vulnerable ethnic. Different with Jews, Gypsies isolation from their own cultural conservatism in history. Gypsy have been described as decadent, and weird race for a long time; suffered unfair comments from other places. However, in Kusturica's eyes, Gypsies are noble, passionate, loyal, and fearless with no doubt. The difficulty that how the stray ethnic integrate into modern society was mildly expressed by a personal tragedy.

I watched "Time of the gypsies" when I was an adolescent boy. When I could not speak a word in English. Until nowadays I could still remember what I felt when I watch this movie but not the title of movie and I didn't know why I could remember. But now I understand why.. This movie has very strong power to make an impression specially when it comes to magical realism, I can still remember how I was amazed when Perhan use his ability. This movie felt like some busy festival where gypsies are dancing and Singing around. Which is exactly what I felt like when I was young. 2 hours of me in the middle of gypsy festival.