Guernica (1978) User Reviews

Very little memory...

[elforel · 12 February 2003]

Unfortunately,I can't say much about this movie because it is a distant memory... I've had the chance to see it in a festival in Italy some years ago. But there is one thing I will ALWAYS remember and that I want to share with everyone, there is a line saying that: "When the germans found the painting Guernica, they asked Picasso: -Have you done this painting? -No, YOU did it..." Isn't that wonderful? I don't know if that is a true event or not, but that was wonderful... This movie was very serious and dark and far from being as baroque and surrealist as Kusturicas other movies...It was a film made in the cinema school...That's about all I remember about it... Oh yes, and everyone had turned on their lighters during the movie, because we had been handed a sheet with the translation of the dialogs...Very peculiar atmosphere!

Maybe too much ambition for its own good

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 21 September 2016]

"Guernice" is a black-and-white short film from 1978, so this one will soon have is 40th anniversary. The director and one of the writers is Boasnian Emir Kusturica and this is one of his earliest career works. he was still in his mid-20s back then and it took a while until his big successes with the Cannes Film Festival for example happened. This is a pretty grim little story, about a boy and his parents who are about to have their lives changed because of something that happens to the boy. With the references about Jews, this is a very political movie and with the ending a very art-themed film too. Obviously, this movie was never intended for people with little interest in both areas. Anyway, I still must say that I was not impressed by the watch here at all. It tries to be too deep and ambitious for its own good and maybe Kusturica, at that point, did not have the talent and level of filmmaking yet to turn this into a convincing work. The acting was fine I guess. It says here on IMDb that this film runs for 25 minutes, but all the versions I found (including the one I watched) were considerably shorter, stayed easily under the 20-minute-mark, but to me it seemed complete. Then again it probably was the film ended before the closing credits already. I had no idea what Guernice was before seeing the film and no clue either afterward. But do I really care? I don't think so. I only know that the final plot twist with the painting and the noses was not enough to sit through everything before that. Overall, I give it a negative review. Thumbs down. But if you still want to see it, make sure you have subtitles available unless you are fluent in Czech.