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Folly in the trenches of Bosnia
[Photos: United Artists Films]
United Nations peacekeepers, aka Smurfs, try to keep the peace in satirical No Man’s Land. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 21, 2002
The follies of war are brilliantly skewered in a Bosnian trench by first-time director Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land.
Tanovic takes a simple setup, enemies trapped together, and turns the situation into a Strangelovian satire. It doesn't matter whether Serbs or Croats were justified to fight; Tanovic's view is that things have spun out of control so long that mending barbed-wire fences now is impossible.
The film opens in 1993 when a Serb patrol gets lost in a fog, a clever piece of symbolism. The soldiers are ambushed, but one, Ciki (Branko Djuric), survives and tumbles into a battlefield trench.
Nino (Rene Bitorajac, left) and Ciki (Branko Kjuric) are enemies in a Bosnian trench.
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He watches as two Croats inspect the trench and install a land mine under a fallen comrade, an insidious booby trap that will mutilate anyone lifting the body. Ciki kills one soldier and wounds another, Nino (Rene Bitorajac). A stalemate develops until the rivals realize that the booby-trapped soldier, Cera (Filip Sovagovic), isn't dead. But if Cera moves in the slightest way, they all will be.
News of the situation attracts United Nations peacekeepers (snidely referred to as Smurfs because of their powder-blue helmets). Tanovic saves his sharpest barbs for these referees, depicting them as well-intended posers without genuine impact.
Right behind the U.N. on Tanovic's hit list is the electronic media, represented by TV reporter Jane Livingstone (Katlin Cartridge), who knows the drama in that trench could earn big ratings.
No Man's Land never stoops to slapstick, but Tanovic's canny sense of the absurd makes everyone appear to be slipping on political banana peels. It's a film laden with wise metaphors and offhand gestures of incompetence when they're needed least. The movie becomes its own sly punch line.
Knowledge of Bosnian war dynamics isn't necessary because the human failings contributing to the mess are universal. The laughs catch in your throat with Tanovic's final image, a stunning symbol of a post-Sept. 11 world bracing for the next senseless explosion.
No Man's Land won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and is nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign film category. The film also won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Shown with English subtitles, although much of the dialogue is in English.
No Man's Land
- Grade: A
- Director: Danis Tanovic
- Cast: Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Katrin Cartlidge
- Screenplay: Danis Tanovic
- Rating: R; profanity, violence
- Running time: 98 min.
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