Underground ending explained

What happens

In the early 1990s civil war, Marko the arms dealer profits while Blacky and Jovan, still lost in the old world, are caught in the violence and most of the main characters die. The dead and living then gather at a riverside wedding.

The last image

The strip of land where the wedding party stands breaks away from the shore and drifts off across the water.

Three readings

1 · Elegy for YugoslaviaThe floating land is a lost shared country, mourned and gone.

2 · Escape from responsibilityThe feast carries on while the question of how it ended goes unanswered.

3 · A comforting fableReuniting the dead and living offers a consolation that history never gave.

What it says

The film closes by turning satire into mourning. It shows a people who kept feasting through lies and disaster, and it won't settle whether that spirit is hope or evasion. That is why the ending is left open.