“The world is watching.”
Swift shot: Tragic, compelling and sensually intense. This is Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut; she wrote, directed and produced In the Land of Blood and Honey as a wake-up call for all of us to remember the horrors of war and to never be complacent with atrocities. Real people suffered in the 90’s in war-torn Eastern Europe, and there was no glory, there was only death and misery. Her film captures the sadness, despair and over-powering terror that surrounded the populace of Bosnia as they watched their men marched off and slaughtered, their women raped, their children . . . systematically destroyed. This is not a film for the easily upset, and unlike some comic book film, the heroes don’t swoop in out of the sky to save the day. That was our job . . . the world’s job . . . and we were tragically late.
Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) is a young Muslim artist, living in Bosnia in 1992, she is a typical doting aunt to her little nephew, Adi. Her sister, Lejla (Vanessa Glodjo) is excited for her to go out on a date with a nice young man for some dancing at the local club. That would be Danijel (Goran Kostic) – a local police-officer. Life is pretty normal . . . until the war begins. Then life, and the film, never return to normal for any of them.
Once the war starts, Danijel has a new job as Serb commander of a new kind of war-horror, a rape camp, where single childless women are repeatedly raped, and while the film never gets into this, it wasn’t just so the soldiers could get their jollies, it was designed to taint the Muslim blood-line for a generation, or forever by creating war bastards . . . any parents out there know the joy and miracle of creating life, yet these perverse, evil men twisted it as a weapon. Life becomes anguish.
The suspense never abates, as we see the war through the eyes of the different players on the different sides of the conflict. And while Danijel is a monster, through the orders he gives because his father is a Serb general, Jolie allows him some catharsis through Ajla, whom Danijel spares from the rapes as he transforms her into his personal pet. Danijel is convinced Ajla is in love with him, and Jolie doesn’t divulge whether or not that is true until the very end. She plays with that question, is Ajla feigning love to receive protection from Danijel, or is she actually falling in love with the monster that, albeit reluctantly, is a war criminal?
Jolie tries to show the Serb side, justifying the horrors, where they claim, “It isn’t murder, it’s politics.” And in one of the most powerfully acted scenes in the film, Rade Serbedzija as Danijel’s father, General Nebojsa delivers a sad soliloquy where he pathetically tries to convince his audience, us, that the Serb revenge is more than justified. But it failed to move me, when the Serbs finally started getting killed, I was glad, because until that point the violence was pretty one-sided . . . and against essentially hapless victims.
The war advances in years, Ajla and Danijel both end up in Sarajevo, and the film reaches its dramatic conclusion there. With almost no respite, this film had my blood boiling most of its run-time, and I watched it in the original Bosnian with English subtitles. Jolie was so determined that American audiences not simply overlook this film as a “reader”, she actually had each scene shot in both Bosnian and English, every actor shot both scenes TWICE!
The emotional toll this film must have taken on the people involved, all the way down to the gaffs, must have been incredible. If you get the Blu-ray, I highly suggest you check out the interview Jolie did. Although she is a little giddy, because it is her first film as writer or director, when she speaks about the shooting of the film, the way it impacted everyone, well I hope she moves audiences to remember more than just a time when the only thing on most American’s minds was this new band from Seattle that launched something called “Grunge.” In my question to her, I asked, “What do you want American audiences to take from the film?” Her answer can be found on the Blu-ray interview . . . it wasn’t what I was really expecting.
[Swift aside: In 1999, the region was again under siege by a genocidal wave of terror, this time in Kosovo – and this time I was a United States Marine, assigned to NATO and stationed in Norway, I was ironing my cammies one day and watching CNN, I heard about Arkan’s Tigers and their rape-squads . . . I spoke to my commanding officer the next day and told him I wanted to be at the tip of the spear, so that is where I grew up, I went to Albania, I saw first-hand the horrors of war. Did I go for glory? No, I went because I was ashamed at how poorly we handled Bosnia, and I was not going to see that happen again, not without at least trying to do something about it. And even though I served there, I still felt shame after watching this film, because we stood by as the keepers of peace and allowed this to happen. What is our grand city upon a hill if not a beacon of hope for the hopeless?]
If you watch this film, thank you, because not many will. It doesn’t promise them sexy action stars nor CGI special-effects, it’s about a bunch of people you have never heard of in a country you can’t pronounce that really suffered, and really should be required viewing for anyone eager for war. Ever.
