Emir Kusturica has always brought an epic scope to the human comedy. On one level, Underground is a Jules and Jim-like triangle, with Belgrade best friends Blacky and Marko forever competing for the woman, Natalija, who loves and resents them both. On another, it's a careening tour through three Yugoslavian eras, each defined against separate forms of fascism: the Nazi occupation during World War II, the high Cold War period's Tito-centrism, and crumbling civil war ruin from within. Leapfrogging forward between massive set pieces at two or three decades per jump, Underground is a Rube Goldberg machine churning out slapstick, violence, spectacle, grotesquerie, and the odd lyricism-a chaos no less compelling for its reckless, destructive motion. Palme d'or, Cannes.-Dennis Harvey