A director once quit cinema, only to return with a chaotic, musical masterpiece.
In short: After facing harsh criticism for his Palme d'Or-winning film, Emir Kusturica announced his retirement at 41. He soon returned, transforming a planned documentary about Gypsy music into the manic, carnivalesque 1998 feature Black Cat, White Cat. It is a vibrant, shaggy-dog story that treats death as a temporary inconvenience.
The film emerged from a project originally titled Musika Akrobatika, which Kusturica initially envisioned as a documentary. As the concept evolved, he added narrative flourishes, turning it into a fictional crime comedy. Set near the Danube River, the plot follows Matko Destanov, a small-time smuggler who gets entangled with a drug-snorting gangster named Dadan. When a heist goes wrong, Dadan forces a marriage between Matko's son, Zare, and his own sister, Afrodita. The film is famous for its chaotic energy, featuring characters who speak in a mix of Romani, Serbian, and Bulgarian.
Critics largely embraced the film's eccentricity. Reviewers like Janet Maslin compared its atmosphere to the work of Fellini, noting the director's evident affection for his characters. Others, such as Andrew O'Hehir, highlighted the film's portrayal of a homeland in ruin, where the architecture is either falling apart or overbuilt. Despite its two-hour and nine-minute runtime, it was praised for its velocity and its ability to find grace in unexpected places, standing in stark contrast to the safe, formulaic studio films of the late 1990s.
Music is central to the film's identity, appearing in almost every scene. The soundtrack is eclectic, featuring everything from traditional Roma music to covers of ABBA's 'Money, Money, Money' performed by the character Dadan. The film's title itself—literally 'Black queen cat, white tomcat'—reflects the surreal, vibrant world Kusturica created. By the end, the protagonists escape on a riverboat, accompanied by a black and a white cat, leaving behind a trail of cash and a series of resurrected corpses that had been hidden in an attic.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Black Cat, White Cat
- Also: Wikidata — Black Cat, White Cat · CC0
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