Review: In the Land of Blood and Honey

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) is not the sort of film you would expect Angelina Jolie to make. As war films go it's bleaker, gorier and more shocking than most.  It tells the story of Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Muslim living in Sarajevo at the outbreak of the war in 1992, and her relationship with her Bosnian Serb prison guard, Danijel (Goran Kostić), as the war progresses.

It’s a daring premise for a film about so recent a war.  When it premiered in Sarajevo, audiences were moved to tears by the memories that film brought to the surface; it is certainly jolting to see images of Sarajevo under siege again.  The treatment of women during the Bosnian war is a topic that is being explored more and more, in academia and literature, and although it is laudable what Jolie is trying to do with this film, unfortunately, it just doesn’t work.  Watching it, you feel you are being shown a clumsily polemic humanitarian lecture rather than a work of any true artistic value.

For starters, the film doesn't appear to know if it's a love story or a psychological exploration of the relationship between captor and prisoner.  Viewers are unsure if we are supposed to feel sympathy for Danijel, as a man overtaken by his circumstances, or to abhor him as a weak-willed misogynist.  If the former, then sadly Danijel is such a creepy and unlikeable character that it is impossible to feel sorry for him.  The chemistry between the two leads throughout is uncertain, as though they are equally unsure how to feel about their characters.

Aside from taking some locational liberties with Sarajevo, there are number of dubious directorial calls in the film.  Including gratuitous female nudity in a film about the objectification of women and juxtaposing quasi-romantic sex scenes with scenes of systematic rape seem nothing more than distasteful.  The war was awful.  It was messy and confusing and people did terrible things to one another, and any film about it will necessarily be harrowing.  In the Land of Blood and Honey, however, dwells on the violence with very little exploration of the motivations and feelings of the individuals involved.

The film caused outrage amongst Serbs on its release and it’s easy to see why.  The Bosnian Serbs are portrayed as cartoonish villains filled with Nazi-esque levels of vitriol towards their Muslim neighbours, whilst the Bosnian Muslims are exclusively shown to be helpless victims clinging idealistically to a vision of a multicultural Bosnia.  I am by no means an apologist for the actions of the Bosnian Serb Army, but the film does little to demonstrate the complexities of the wider war, other than a brief allusion to Srebrenica, and the Muslim-Croat war is never mentioned at all.

Of course, these complaints would have been obscured by a stronger story.  At heart, this is a weak story, poorly told.  The action jumps from scene to scene, seemingly too desperate to educate and shock in equal measure; there is no build-up of suspense and we are never given the opportunity to really get to know the characters.  The result is that the unsettling relationship between Danijel and Ajla is utterly incomprehensible.

The title itself is a controversial choice, evocative of Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts and the myth of ancient hatreds that influenced John Major's thinking during the war.  Presumably the honey is supposed to be the sweet antithesis to the blood soaking the land, but there is very little sweetness in this film.  Coffee might have been a more appropriate choice.

It is estimated that up to 60,000 women were raped in prison camps during the Bosnian War. Their suffering, and that of women in all wars, is a commendable cause to highlight, but there have been better films made about the impact that this sexual violence had on Bosnia’s women (Esma’s Secret/Grbavica (2006), for one). Since In the Land of Blood and Honey was released, when people find out that I have studied the Bosnian War they often ask if I have seen it. Now I can say that I have – and that I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re looking for good films about the Bosnian War, Hollywood has done it far better in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and Bosnians excelled at it in No Man’s Land (2001). In both educational and artistic terms, this film has sadly little to offer.

Originally posted at www.elliewilsonwrites.co.uk

Silent Classic: The General

Received poorly on its release in 1926, The General really is an extraordinary film. Buster Keaton's superb physical comedy and relentless energy in performing all his own stunts (undertaken with considerably fewer safety measures than today's actors enjoy) shine throughout a film that will make you laugh at loud at the escapades of Keaton's hapless Johnnie Gray, a railway engineer working on the Western & Atlantic Rail Road in 1862.

Johnnie has two loves in his life - his steam engine, General, and Annabelle (Marion Mack).  To impress Annabelle he tries to enlist to fight for the Confederate forces, but is turned down because he is more useful to the south as an engineer.  Annabelle declares she will not speak to him again until he is in uniform like her heroic father and brother.  When Johnnie's beloved engine is captured by Unionist spies, he sets off on a disaster-laden one-man pursuit of it behind enemy lines, unwittingly rescuing Annabelle in the process.  They make their escape from the Unionist forces and Johnnie is hailed as a hero for warning of the attack.

Keaton's physical exertions are well-matched by Mack, who manages it all in a cumbersome frock.   The battle set pieces at the end are hugely impressive, considering the limited editing techniques available at the time.  When a bridge and steam engine collapse into a river, in the single most expensive scene of the silent movie era, you'll forget that you're watching a film made nearly 90 years ago.

The slapstick gags are sometimes predictable but always hilarious.  The story is dragged out a bit towards the end and in the re-released version from January 2014 the ragtime piano soundtrack becomes a little repetitive, since no attempt has been made to match the music to the action.

Overall, however, this an excellent film that more than holds it own against today's action blockbusters and delivers a lot of laughs along the way.  Well worth seeing.