When Father Was Away on Business (1985)

Tito's break-up with Stalin in 1948 marked the beginning of not only confusing, but also very dangerous years for many hard-core Yugoslav communists. A careless remark about the newspaper cartoon is enough for Mesha to join many arrested unfortunates. His family is now forced to cope with the situation and wait for his release from prison. The story is told from the perspective of Malik, his young son who believes the mother's story about father being "away on business".Now, the director (whose name I won't write because I fear I'll butcher it) is a great artist, and quite possibly the greatest storyteller out of Yugoslavia. Indeed, we do not think of them having a film industry and yet he has made many great works.But this is not my favorite. I love when he digs his toes into the surreal, and this film fails on that count. There is still a dash of humor here and there, but the film still runs a little too long and is too serious. Subject matter like this probably should be serious, but if his other work is any indication, it has a greater impact when it is not.

A Shu-fan wrote: "The Zolj family is of Jewish origin. The circumcision scene and the later bath of the boy are absolutely comical. Though in difficult time, the innocence of children is expressed in great lovely details, Malik's interest in other sex, his father's predicament… The filming location was Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, a place where the Jews and Muslims were killing each other. Kosovo is another long-stay pain. The body and soul of this region will take a long long time to restore." I just want to say that the family in the movie is not Jewish. They are Bosnian Muslim family and that is why they had a circumcision. Also, to people from ex-Yu is very clear when they hear their names. Their neighbor is Bosnian Serbian family (visible from the scene of the funeral); and Ankica is Bosnian Croatian (they are mostly Roman Catholics). Otherwise, I saw the movie 3 times in the last 15-20 years and every time I saw a different things in the movie, but overall - I just loved it! There is one thing that I have to mention - the subtitles are pretty bad and do not do the justice to the movie - they can be expressed much, much better! I am Kusturica's fan and it is too bad that we can not see more of his movies here in the US. This movie is just beautiful - political situation, family ties, relationships in ex-Yu... seen through the eyes of an innocent child. Beautiful, beautiful!

Winner of the award for Best Film at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival and Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film, Emir Kusturica's When Father Was Away on Business is a blend of comedy, family drama, and political realism that is courageous, funny, and deeply moving. The title of the film refers to the lie told to a six-year-old to cover up the fact that his father was serving time in a labor camp for making a thoughtless remark that offended the Communist apparatchiks. Set in Yugoslavia in 1950 after the break between Stalin and Tito, it was a time of confusion when people worshiped Stalin one week and despised him the next. The story is told from the perspective of six-year-old Malik (Moreno D'E Bartolli) and his performance is natural and convincing.His father Mesa (Miki Manojlovic) is a low-level bureaucrat who spends more time womanizing and drinking than attending to his job. A casual remark filled with sarcasm about a political cartoon made to his wife Sena's (Mirjana Karanovic) sister-in-law Ankica (Mira Furlan), leads to his arrest and detention by Zijo (Mustafa Nadarevic), a Communist Party official who also happens to be his wife's brother. Mesa is sent to work in the mines while Sena becomes a seamstress to make ends meet and his sensitive son starts sleepwalking, perhaps a wry metaphor for the status of the people under Marshal Tito.The family does reunite when Mesa is sent to a remote settlement for further re-socialization but he does not change his ways and visits prostitutes with the party official in charge of his rehabilitation, using Malik as his escort. In a sub-plot, Malik (who looks and acts more like ten or eleven than six) "falls in love" with a girl about his age who is suffering from a serious blood disorder and their inevitable separation is quite touching. Though family relations are strained, especially between Sena, Zijo, and Ankica, the family is very strong and we know that somehow they will endure. When Father Was Away on Business is perhaps the least daring cinematic ally of all of Kusturica's works but it is one of the most heartfelt and gained the director his first international success, paving the way for the full maturation of his vision in the brilliant and disturbing Underground.

If you are familiar with Emir Kusturica's work, chances are you probably saw "Underground" or "Times of the Gypsies," or perhaps "Black Cat, White Cat." I guess this earlier film is a bit harder to get into because it is less eccentric than the usual Kusturica fair, and it focuses on a specific point of Yugoslav history, namely the time immediately following the break-up between Tito and Stalin. The film itself is very good, but it would certainly help your perception if you were familiar with historical aspect of it all. Some similarities can be drawn to "Tito i ja" because "Otac.." is seen through a child's point of view, but then it was made something like ten years prior to "Tito i ja," so I guess you should disregard that statement altogether. The film is a drama from start to finish, and like other Kusturica's films, it requires much of emotional involvement as well as some patience. But I definitely like it, although it's not for everyone. I still recommend it, though.