With close to 2 dozen reviews up, one thing that is is notable is that in almost every case, the senior film critic took on the assignment of reviewing this movie. Aside from Dargis, there was Turan of the L.A. Times, Chang of Variety, McCarthy of THR, and O'Hehir of Salon among others. This is obviously a testament to Angelina's position and the news value and intense curiosity over almost everything she does.
As to the question of whether Angelina's celebrity creates a bias in the minds of critics, I believe that overall she is being given a fair shake. There are a few critics who seem to resent the political agenda behind the film but Angelina herself has taken almost every opportunity to highlight that agenda and bring it front and center in any discussion about the film. Being a veteran political activist, she must be well aware of how such efforts can be polarizing so it is a conscious decision on her part. The other frequent "complaint" has been the level of brutality shown onscreen -- which again Angelina acknowledges was purposely intended to make audiences uncomfortable.
Matt Mazur very early on alluded to the fact that the filmmakers and distributors knew it was a potentially divisive film which was why they decided to skip the festival circuit. Like everything else about this endeavor, Angelina has been uncompromising and was willing to take the inevitable hits that her bold positions were sure to elicit.
Lastly, the film is obviously scoring well below where an Oscar contender would be (although not too far from early Oscar "favorite" Extremely Loud). But there is reason for the filmmakers to be happy with its reception as in that mix are strong reviews from Top Critics. Even some like Turan's that were counted as negative actually read positive. He ended by saying:: "If things break right, perhaps a career like (Eastwood's) could be in the offing." Audience reaction also seems to be fairly good and word of mouth should help the film's box office.
In a Fractured Society, Ethnic War Kindles Both Hatred and Desire
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: December 22, 2011
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” tells the story of two acquaintances who become enemies, lovers and each other’s mirror during the Bosnian war. The movie opens in 1992 right before the fighting started and soon after Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), an artist and a Muslim, goes on a date with Danijel (Goran Kostic), a cop and a Bosnian Serb. Recently acquainted, the two meet up at a club, where they fall into each other’s arms, dance and flirt, nestled in an exuberant, raucous humanity, a communion that abruptly ends when a bomb detonates inside the club. The old world falls away and in its place there is dust, blood and Ajla and Danijel staggering toward their newly divided worlds.The war comes fast and the director, Angelina Jolie, sets its terms ruthlessly. Ajla, along with several dozen other Muslim women, is grabbed by Serbian soldiers and put on a bus. It’s a short, hellish ride — from the bus, one of the soldiers guns down a passerby as casually as if he were skeet shooting — that ends when the convoy arrives at a military base. The women are lined up and stripped of their possessions, and a solider asks if any can cook. A few nervously raise their hands, making anxious bargains for their lives. One woman says she’s a doctor while another says she can sew. The soldier asks the second woman about her sexual abilities instead and then grabs her and rapes her in front of the others.
The scene is, in one obvious respect, something of a didactic illustration of rape as an instrument of war, but it’s also undeniably and rightly disturbing. It rattles the movie and you along with it, and it also introduces the idea that war is very much about the violent domination of women and not just about nation-states, ethnic conflicts, historical grudges and men killing men. Ms. Jolie literalizes this theme by bringing Ajla and Danijel together again at the military camp, where he is a commander. He sees her shortly after the other woman is raped, saving Ajla from being similarly assaulted, a decision that has the quality of a moral choice but may in fact be purely mercenary.
The question of whether Danijel saves Ajla because he is fundamentally good or because circumstances have made him essentially selfish colors everything that comes after. In a perverse twist made believable by the surrealism of war and by the persuasiveness of the lead performances, Danijel takes Ajla as his lover. He saves her, but doesn’t shield her entirely from the terrors of imprisonment. Time slips away amid small cruelties, brutal assaults and a harrowing passage in which the soldiers use the women as shields during a raid on a Muslim enclave. In this scene, with her cinematographer, Dean Semler, Ms. Jolie manages the tricky feat of creating a chaotically violent vision, in which the focus remains intently on those who, in many war movies, are often an afterthought: the women.
This is Ms. Jolie’s directing debut — she also wrote and co-produced the movie — and there’s a somewhat awkward instructional, at times almost proselytizing aspect to the story that seems of a piece with her laudable humanitarian work. That’s especially true in the scenes in which Ms. Jolie switches into full-on expository mode, putting dry, plodding words into the characters’ mouths that would work better in the kind of on-screen textual explanations, with their snippets of history and politics, that open and close the movie. When, for instance, in an early scene, Danijel’s father, a Serbian general (Rade Serbedzija), instructs his son on military matters, he also provides a short history lesson on the region that’s clearly meant for the benefit of those watching the movie.
Moments like these pull the movie down and you temporarily out of it. For the most part, though, it moves briskly and easily holds your attention, largely through a perverse love story that doesn’t suffer for being such an obvious metaphor for the larger battle raging beyond Ajla and Danijel’s relationship. Both Ms. Marjanovic and Mr. Kostic are very fine (like the rest of the cast they deliver their dialogue in Bosnian) and they navigate the contradictions of their characters’ feelings, the flashes of hate, the surrender to desire, with delicacy. There’s madness in this relationship. But as the glimpses of the outside world show, particularly in some tough scenes involving Ajla’s sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), there is madness everywhere.
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is rated R (Children under 17 must be accompanied by an adult). Graphic war violence, including rape.
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY
Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
Written and directed by Angelina Jolie; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by Patricia Rommel; music by Gabriel Yared; production design by Jon Hutman; costumes by Gabriele Binder; produced by Ms. Jolie, Graham King, Tim Headington and Tim Moore; released by Film District. In Bosnian with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes.
