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.

London is the place for me

I’ve only ever seen two films twice at the cinema. One was Mission: Impossible 3, which was entirely accidental (I hadn't even seen the previous two films, and still haven't). The other was Paddington, and it was entirely of my own free will.

Michael Bond’s Paddington books were my favourites when I was a young child; I chortled away at them until tears ran down my face. So when I heard they were making a big screen CGI version of my favourite bear, I was a little apprehensive. However, having heard good things from others who had seen it, noting its impressive cast list and that Bond had given his blessing to the film, even appearing in a brief cameo, I decided to brave it.

I had no need to worry.  The film is utterly charming from start to finish.  The CGI Paddington is endearing and perfectly voiced by Ben Whishaw, in all his hat-wearing politeness, and the story itself stays true to spirit of the original tales.

As is the fashion with films these days, it opens with a backstory for our ursine hero in Darkest Peru, with his Aunt Lucy and Uncle Pastuzo, and a British explorer, who manages to civilise the bears through marmalade and talk of a London that will always give them a warm welcome.  The gentle satirising of Britishness begins within the first few minutes and is littered throughout the film.  An earthquake that ruins the bears' home is the catalyst for Paddington to stow away on a cargo ship headed for London in search of that warm welcome.  However, when he arrives at Paddington station he is disappointed to find a London where “hardly anyone wear a hat or says hello.”

Fortunately, the young bear is taken in by the Brown family, played superbly in their eccentricities by Hugh Bonneville, as Mr Brown, who likes all his stationary in order, and Sally Hawkins, as Mrs Brown, an illustrator who struggles to keep her emotions in check.  Julie Walters puts in an excellent turn as Mrs Bird (in the books the Browns' housekeeper, but here an elderly relative) who likes everything ship-shape, keeps a hoover for all occasions and doesn’t trust the microwave.  Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin are also excellent as Judy and Jonathan.  ("You have literally just brought home a random bear", says Judy, aghast with teenage horror.)

As Mr Brown scrambles to get a bear added to his home insurance, mayhem ensues, from a spot of bother with the facilities, to a misunderstanding with a pickpocket and a mishap on the escalators in the Underground.  The slapstick is never overplayed and Paddington's genuine good intentions mean it never grates.  Jim Broadbent as Mr Gruber adds a touch of magic too, with his labyrinth of an antique shop and his train set delivering tea.

To add drama to the story, Nicole Kidman plays a villainous taxidermist out for revenge, aided by creepy nextdoor neighbour, Mr Curry (Peter Capaldi, in a wonderful cringe-worthy turn).  When Paddington finds his life in danger, the Brown family realise that they need Paddington every bit as much as he needs them, and band together to set out and rescue him.  (Supplying the 'mild peril' which, along with a flirtatious security guard and a spot of cross dressing, earned the film its scandalous PG certification).

The soundtrack is provided in part by D Lime, a Cuban band who perform live in the film, encapsulating the vibrant multicultural atmosphere of the London that Paddington comes to embrace - a place where “nobody’s alike, which means everyone fits in.”

Lessons about immigration aside, Paddington is an absolute delight, with plenty of humour for children and adults alike.  If you want something to make you chuckle and warm your heart this Easter, look no further.  This bear has been well and truly looked after.

Paddington was released on DVD today.

The best laid plans...

Book Two

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (1937)

For several generations of British schoolchildren, this staple of GCSE English Literature syllabuses will be all-too familiar.  However, it wasn't on the menu during my school career and I hadn't got around to reading it as an adult either.  Our Year 10s have just started studying it and I am therefore pleased to announce that I have finally joined the ranks of those who have read Of Mice and Men.

Steinbeck's classic tale of the Great Depression and the American Dream has been endlessly deconstructed by students and English teachers for years, as successive generations search desperately for yet another original interpretation.  In order to judge the story on its own merits, I decided to avoid reading any of these before I started.

It’s a short novella, written by Steinbeck as a ‘playable novel’, resulting in large portions of dialogue and limited settings, with the majority of the scenes taking place inside the bunkhouse or the barn, making it easier to transfer to stage.  The story doesn't suffer for this, and in fact, it didn't really occur to me until I had finished reading. The accented dialect of the ranch hands is written out phonetically, which I have found off-putting in the past, but works really well here. I could hear the voices of the characters in my head as I read it.

It’s an intense story, with the action taking place over the course of just a few days, from Lennie and George first arriving on the ranch to the tragic ending in the brush four days later.  The whole book is really one ominous foreshadowing that leaves the conclusion inevitable, from the moment we first learn about the incident in Weed and witness Lennie’s initial meeting with Curley’s wife. However, although it quite clearly is, it never feels like an obvious setup and instead only contributes to the intensity of the drama.

Although Steinbeck has important messages about the society of 1930's America, the characters are so exquisitely crafted that the story never feels like a lecture.  The racism, discrimination and sexism inherent in society at the time of the book's publication is superbly exposed to the reader through the microcosm of life on the ranch.

But the core running through the centre of the novel is the friendship between George and Lennie.  Lennie, the giant with the child's mind who doesn't know his own strength, and the quicker-witted George share a bond that is belied by George's chastisement and which serves to make the conclusion even more devastating.

If you’re one of the few people who haven’t yet read the novella, or the revision guides, or written numerous essays on the multi-layered metaphor of Candy’s dog, I won’t go into too many details of the story. If you haven’t read it, it’s a simple but brilliant story that unfortunately may have become obscured and fogged by exhaustive scrutiny. And if you did read it in school, I would recommend a re-visit without the pressure of annotation and analysis, to enjoy it for the bleak yet powerful story of failed dreams that it truly is.

Five stars.

My 2015 Reading Challenge Begins

As a child, I was a voracious reader; under the covers with a torch, in the corner at parties, behind a maths textbook at school – name a time and place I shouldn’t have been reading and you can bet I would have been.  I devoured the entire library at my first school with two years left to go.  But something happened when I was 18 and went off to University.  Suddenly I stopped reading for pleasure.  I worked my way through lengthy reading lists, of academic texts and journal articles, but when the work was done, I didn’t want to read anymore.

This persisted after I graduated and through my twenties.  In 2014, I decided that would change.  As it’s often said – all great writers read.  And if I wanted to call myself a writer, truly, I would have to start reading.  So, in January 2014 I charged myself with reading 12 books that year – one a month.  I set aside time each week to read.

I completed my challenge, skidding up to the deadline on New Year’s Eve as I raced through the last few chapters of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Stories.  I looked back over the list of books I had read that year and felt rather pleased with myself.  Except – I couldn’t really remember all that many details about the books I had read.

So when I set myself the same challenge for 2015 – 12 books in 12 months – I decided that, alongside the reading, I would also write a short review of every book, to serve as an aide de memoire at the end of the year, and ensure that all that reading didn’t go completely to waste.  And lucky for you, dear reader, I’m going to share them with you.  I may have some unusual recommendations you wouldn’t have previously considered, or I may steer you clear of something you’d thought was going to be interesting.  Who knows?

Book One

(Yes, I am aware that the beginning of March is a little late to be finishing only my first book, but January 2015 was something of a write-off in terms of leisure time for reasons I won’t bore you with.)

Doctor Who: Marco Polo by John Lucarotti

(A Target Book, published 1985)

Ok, I know, not exactly a literary classic to kick off with, but I needed an easy read to get myself back into the swing of things. I’ve been watching the Classic Doctor Who episodes from the beginning and this is one of the missing episodes, so I decided to buy the Target book instead.

Like all the Target novelisations, this doesn’t feature exceptional prose.  I don’t know how much of the dialogue is lifted from the original episodes, but at times it does feel like a script with the odd stage direction thrown in here and there.  There are some nice descriptions of thirteenth century China and Mongolia though.

In terms of plot, it’s fairly slow-moving and a little obvious, since we know that there is no way the Doctor is going to end up letting the mighty Kublai Khan keep his TARDIS, but the historical aspects of the story were interesting enough to keep me reading, even if I hadn't have been interested in the adventures of the Doctor and his companions.   I felt that Messer Polo himself came across as somewhat dense and easily fooled, but that may have been the intention of the author.

Lucarotti’s interpretation is witty at times and I could definitely hear the character’s voices in my head when I was reading.  However, one of my bugbears with this book, and with the other novelisations, is that Ian seems to come across as a bit of a chauvinistic pig and Barbara as a bit of a wet lettuce, which isn’t the impression I get from watching the programme at all.

Overall?  An easy read and not especially gripping, but, if nothing else, it got me to do a significant amount of background reading on a period of history I previously knew very little about.  Three stars.

I just wanna see you smile!

Having finally scraped together enough pocket money to purchase Bruce Springsteen’s latest offering, High Hopes (Columbia, 2014), I rushed home to put it on, and wasn’t disappointed.  I haven’t met a Springsteen album I didn’t like yet, but, having read mixed reviews, I approached with an open mind. Although it’s obviously not a self-contained package like previous albums, I came to it fully aware that it was an odds-and-sods collection of previously unreleased and reworked tracks and the production is seamless throughout.  The tracks fit together well, showcasing Springsteen's rough New Jersey poetry in all its customary brilliance.

From the joyous horns on the title track (not a Springsteen composition, but one he has stamped his own unmistakable style on), through the pulsating “Down in the Hole” and the multi-layered rhythms and uplifting chorus of “Heaven’s Wall", both the new and the rearranged had me captivated.  Even “Frankie Fell in Love”, the weakest track on the album, still holds its own as a standard Springsteen rocky number.  The Irish folk elements in “This is Your Sword” work as well here as they did on Wrecking Ball and the haunting poignancy of the cornet and snare combination on “The Wall” really gets inside your chest.

“American Skin (41 Shots)”, written about the shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant by New York Police in 1999, which has mesmerised me since I first heard the live version, recorded at Madison Square Garden in July 2000 (featured on The Essential Bruce Springsteen), is beefed up in its first proper studio recording, but retains its hypnotic beauty.  In the sleeve notes Springsteen states that Tom Morello and his guitar became his muse in the development of this record, and it’s clear why.  Morello’s solos soar off every track he’s featured on, and none more so than on the electric new version of “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, an entirely different beast to the song that first appeared on the album of the same title.  Bruce Springsteen may not be the most virtuosic guitarist, but he knows how to craft songs that wrap you up in their narratives and this album demonstrates that his talent is in no way fading as the years pass.  As “Dream Baby Dream” swells and builds, in all its euphoric simplicity, you're aware that you’ve listened to an album that is a true musical experience.

Oh, and for an extra £2 I got a DVD of Springsteen and the E Street Band playing Born in the USA in its entirety in London last year, further evidence of why The Boss is considered one of the best live acts around.

Buy music online independently J http://www.recordstore.co.uk/

Marrying Mr Darcy: An Act of Feminism?

The conclusion of Jane Austen’s best-loved novel, Pride and Prejudice, recounts like the plot of an unimaginative average fairy tale – girl of modest means falls in love with and marries a rich and handsome man and lives happily ever after.  By today’s standards Elizabeth Bennet’s eventual achievement of finding herself a husband is not much of a triumph, yet she remains one of the most enduringly popular characters in literature.  Her story has captivated me many times over.  Is this because secretly all I long for is financial security as the wife of my very own Mr Darcy?  Or does Elizabeth hold a deeper attraction, as a character?  Is there any reasonable justification for my affection for this eighteenth century genteel heroine?

The first thing that we notice about Elizabeth is her wit – her “impertinence” as she calls it; or the “liveliness of [her] mind”, as Mr Darcy prefers.  Like many I sat down to read P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley with glee – legitimate fanfiction, by a reputable author!  But the book left me disappointed and it took me a while to realise why.  It was because James had reduced Elizabeth to a monochromic docile wife; she has none of the sparkling wit that so endears her to us in the original novel.  Absent was her “lively, sportive manner” of talking to her husband described in Pride and Prejudice’s closing chapter.  It is a testament to the timelessness Austen’s writing that the vast majority of the dialogue in Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC adaptation is lifted straight from the book and still has the power to make us laugh.

Elizabeth is always laughing.  She herself declares that she “dearly love[s] a laugh” but qualifies this with the addition that she hopes not to “ridicule what is wise and good”, only “follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies.”  This distinction sets her apart from the laughter of her younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia, and her mother.  Lydia is often described as laughing; after eloping with Wickham, she writes that she can “hardly help laughing myself at your surprise tomorrow morning, as soon as I am missed.”  Lydia has no sense of when laughing is appropriate, whereas Elizabeth has a keen awareness of this.

That Elizabeth flaunts social convention and expectations of women in some ways (“jumping over stiles and springing over puddles” on her way to see her sister Jane when she is taken ill, rambling in solitude in the parkland at Rosings) is tempered by her acute consciousness of decorum.  In response to her mother’s loud and vulgar pontificating on the subject and Jane and Bingley’s marriage at the Netherfield Ball, Elizabeth “blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation.”  Austen uses Elizabeth’s blushes throughout the novel to indicate a “social awareness that others lack.”[1]  Elizabeth knows when and where to appropriately direct her mischievous conversation.  Darcy, as evidenced by his conversations with Miss Bingley, though more reserved, is also capable of this.  It is this, alongside Eliza Bennet’s “fine eyes”, that first attracts him to her.  Though he believes her manners are “not those of the fashionable world” he is “caught by their easy playfulness.”  He, like us, does not care for the simpering pretentions of Miss Bingley, preferring instead intelligent exchanges with Elizabeth.

With her great eye for the “minutiae”[2], Austen’s novels are filled with gently mocking observations of the ridiculousness present in the society of her time, and through Elizabeth we hear Austen’s own voice.  Most of these characters are so pompous and oblivious that they do not realise they are being mocked, and so we share in the private joke with Elizabeth and Austen.  It is this balance of disregard for the good opinions of those she does not respect with her recognition of the impropriety of her family’s behaviour that identifies Elizabeth as the rational voice guiding us through the follies of Regency Society.

Elizabeth is not without faults, which perhaps accounts for why we love her more than Austen’s other heroines.  She is not the meek Fanny Price of Mansfield Park nor the unwaveringly sensible Elinor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility, nor is she the sometimes irritatingly delusional eponymous Emma Woodhouse.  She certainly has her flaws – her hasty prejudices, to name one – but retains an intrinsic goodness and an all-important self-awareness, which is familiar to the modern reader.  Though she is quick to judge Darcy based on Wickham’s lies about their shared past, when she learns the truth she is happy to acknowledge her error.

There is one aspect of Elizabeth’s behaviour that divides those who debate her status as a feminist character.  Her determination to marry for love leads her to reject not one, but two proposals.  At first glance this seems vindication of Elizabeth’s position as a thoroughly modern woman – who amongst us could contemplate the unendurable agony of a marriage to the absurd Mr Collins?  Should we not celebrate her courage in turning down Mr Darcy, with all his wealth, because she does not like him?  Mr Darcy, as would be expected of a man of his social standing at the time, is certain of her acceptance, despite the insulting pride and arrogance of his proposal.  Elizabeth’s rebuttal is so strong and unusual for the time that we cannot help but cheer her on.

We join Elizabeth in her shock at her friend Charlotte Lucas’ acceptance of Mr Collins' offer of marriage; in her “distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.”  We see later that Charlotte is embarrassed by the gaucheness of her husband, but she defends herself: “I am not a romantic you know.  I never was.  I ask only a comfortable home.”  Marrying well was one of the only options available to women at this time and Charlotte has submitted to pragmatic realism.  And thus we start to question whether Elizabeth is, in fact, acting selfishly in turning down two men who have the means to provide financial security for her and her sisters, whose fortunes are entailed away from them on their father’s death.

Lyme Park, standing in for Pemberley in  the
1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice

In Georgian England, these decisions were not merely a question of love versus money.  This “crudely reduce[s] the intricacies of human choice” for “surely the strategic and emotional are blended in all of us?”[3]  Indeed, we can never be sure that Elizabeth is a not a little serious when she tells Jane that her love for Mr Darcy dates from the moment she “first saw his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”  It does appear that Elizabeth’s feelings have already begun to change on arrival at Pemberley, before Mr Darcy has made his unexpected entrance.  In the eighteenth century, the “notion that the way a man landscaped his grounds might give some indication of his moral and mental qualities” was not uncommon[4], and we may reasonably conclude that Elizabeth’s admiration of Pemberley’s extensive woods and natural beauty is due to her appreciation of Mr Darcy’s tastes, and not to her desire for his fortune.  Nevertheless she does muse, apparently with some regret, “of all this I might have been mistress.”

Set at the end of the eighteenth century, Pride and Prejudice’s characters would doubtless have been aware of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792.  Against this backdrop, we may judge Elizabeth harshly for succumbing to that which society expected of her and settling for life as a gentleman’s wife.  On the other hand, this is no marriage of convenience and we should not begrudge her a life of comfort, for it is not one chosen in haste.  In Georgian England, where marriages were primarily business arrangements, for the consolidation of assets and procreation of heirs, and where women lived entirely subservient to their husbands, hers, we are confident, will be a marriage based on love and, most importantly, respect.  Safe in the knowledge that Mr Darcy so admires the qualities in Lizzy that we do ourselves - so much so that he has been inspired to change his opinions and his manners - we are able to anticipate her future happiness.

Is Elizabeth Bennet a feminist, a realist, or simply a romantic?  It may well be that she is a mixture of all three in equal measure, set apart from her contemporary literary heroines by her passion, her flaws, her complexities and, ultimately, her humanity.  She is as real a woman to today’s readers as she was to her 1813 audience and will unquestionably remain so for many centuries to come.

---

[1] John Mullan, What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved, (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p.260.

[2] Ibid., p.5.

[3] Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p.44.

[4] Tony Tanner’s notes on the 1972 Penguin edition of Pride and Prejudice, p.397.

Originally posted at www.elliewilsonwrites.co.uk