Underground

The 1995 film, "Underground", portrays Yugaslavia during and after World War II. WWII was obviously disastrous and in European countries like Yugoslavia even more so. The constant uncertainty and deadly attacks definitely took their tole on the overall society in Yugoslavia. Based on the trailer for the film, it looks like it takes a satirical and somewhat slapstick approach to the portrayal of these times but does so to point at more serious issues. The trailer is a collage of calamitous...chaos; from swinging on chandeliers to smashing bottles on heads and dancing on tanks, all accompanied by a deafening marching band. All of these absurd images in the context of WWII remind me of the novel "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller. I haven't seen "Underground" but I would not be surprised if it was stylistically similar in using absurdism to juxtapose the foolishness of war. Many surrealistic images like the band under water or the piece of land floating away could be indicative of this societies detachment from their accustomed reality.