A great director remains a great director even if he loses his dignity. Emir Kusturica who goes on his knees to the Kremlin to kiss the slipper of the tyrant Vladimir Putin, with this unseemly gesture does not jeopardize his well-deserved fame as a man of cinema. Rather, it makes clear what Concetto Marchesi (who was not spared from this disease) called the “lust of servility” expressed by intellectuals towards the powerful, dictators, the powerful, the persecutors of other intellectuals who instead of the joys of the red carpet they know the anguish of cruel detention and segregation.
What need was there for Kusturica to thank Putin for having destroyed an independent and free state like Ukraine?
What need did he have to put himself on the level of the mediocre Putinist propagandists gratified by the lights of the rancid and conformist talkshows of the West that they hate?
Yet it is necessary not to derogate from the principle of freedom of expression and the intolerant vice of disqualifying the greatness of a work of art with the servile squalor of those who created it. Without mixing different plans, without falling into intolerance on the contrary. Kusturica has every right to show himself in the sad figure of the regime’s lackey. We have every right to consider him an unworthy character and to continue to admire his films. The difference between us and them is all here.
