The film’s score, composed by Kusturica’s band The No Smoking Orchestra, is not background — it is a character. The brass band follows the actors like a Greek chorus on methamphetamines. When Dadan runs after a goose, the music speeds up. When Afrodita stands up to her brother, a trumpet wails with triumph. Kusturica once said, “In my films, people move to music even when there is no music.” This is evident: the characters do not walk; they skip, stumble, or waddle. The film’s final scene — a wedding feast where a man with a giant bleeding head dances, a bride throws herself into a river, and everyone sings “Pit, pit, i pijem” (Drink, drink, and I drink) — collapses the boundary between joy and despair.

At its core, the film operates on trickster logic. The protagonist, Matko (Bajram Severdzan), is a small-time smuggler whose schemes inevitably collapse into farce. He borrows money from the gangster Dadan (Srdjan Todorovic) for a train heist of fuel, but the plan goes so wrong that the train’s wheels are stolen, and the fuel is poured onto the ground. Failure is not tragic here — it is generative. Each misstep births a new, wilder situation. Dadan doesn’t kill Matko; instead, he forces Matko’s son, Zare, to marry Dadan’s dwarf sister, Afrodita. The marriage is a grotesque transaction, yet Kusturica subverts it: Afrodita, barely four feet tall, has the soul of a lioness. She saves Zare from a suicide attempt and teaches him that love is not about height but about will.

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