Guilt is probably the major theme in this great Yugoslavian film, which is a mixture of interrelating stories taking place in Belgrad during one eventful night. The film ends with one of the main characters being stoned while he's yelling "I'm innocent". Whether he did actually try to steal gasoline from cars, the deed he was accused of, is irrelevant (besides, if he did, the gasoline was meant for his family, which had none); and thankfully the director Paskaljevic leaves this question unanswered. More important is the fact that right before the hypothetic theft he was taking part in the torturing of a young couple, so his claim of innocence doesn't really correspond to the truth. On the other hand, a mob which tries to kill a young man for stealing gas doesn't have a much higher position on the moral scale.
What Bure Baruta shows is a post-war country where the ethics of people are so dimmed, that none of them can really call himself innocent. These people commit horrible acts in the name of love, hate, or both. Even the film's most sympathetic character, an old bus driver, ends up killing the man who tried to hijack the bus. But none of these people are thoroughly guilty, either, because what they are is what the war has done to them. The bus driver kills not because he likes to, but because he's tired of the chaos his country has descended into. The irony lies in that the hijacker probably felt the same way, he only expressed himself differently. It is the film's strength that even the worst of it's characters are not monsters, and in the end we can't really condemn single one of them. Otherwise we would be in that mob stoning that young man.
Although I've given examples of the stories contained in Bure Baruta, they are only facets of the full spectrum the film paints before us. Bure Baruta is one of the greatest European films of the last decade, and quite possibly the best post-war depiction ever made for the big screen.
What Bure Baruta shows is a post-war country where the ethics of people are so dimmed, that none of them can really call himself innocent. These people commit horrible acts in the name of love, hate, or both. Even the film's most sympathetic character, an old bus driver, ends up killing the man who tried to hijack the bus. But none of these people are thoroughly guilty, either, because what they are is what the war has done to them. The bus driver kills not because he likes to, but because he's tired of the chaos his country has descended into. The irony lies in that the hijacker probably felt the same way, he only expressed himself differently. It is the film's strength that even the worst of it's characters are not monsters, and in the end we can't really condemn single one of them. Otherwise we would be in that mob stoning that young man.
Although I've given examples of the stories contained in Bure Baruta, they are only facets of the full spectrum the film paints before us. Bure Baruta is one of the greatest European films of the last decade, and quite possibly the best post-war depiction ever made for the big screen.