MOVIE REVIEW: ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’
Film puts focus of victims in Bosnia
“In the Land of Blood and Honey,” directed and co-written by Angelina Jolie, refuses to spare its audience or its characters.
A grim twist on “Romeo and Juliet” set amidst mass rape and ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian war of the early 1990s, the film is part parade of war-crime horrors, part harrowing melodrama. It’s hard to watch, but Miss Jolie’s vision of social breakdown and affectless barbarism is so powerful that it deserves to be seen.
When the movie opens, Bosnia is at peace. A young woman named Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) goes on a date with a soldier named Danijel (Goran Kostic) at a local club. They flirt. They smile. They dance. And then a bomb goes off. Suddenly, their whole world is over.
When we next see Ajla, it’s four months later. Her apartment is raided by Serbian soldiers to brutal effect. The men are machine gunned; the women are taken off to a work camp to serve soldiers and be raped.
For roughly the next hour, Miss Jolie offers a cold, precise, sometimes shocking chronicle of a world wrecked by atrocity: forced relocations, mass shootings and random killings. Degradation and humiliation (old women forced to strip so soldiers can laugh) mixes with unspeakable horrors (shallow graves packed with bodies and filled in by bulldozers). After a while, it becomes hard to tell the difference — which seems to be part of the point.
The only salvation in the midst of all this is that Ajla ends up at a work camp run by Danijel — who offers her his bed, and a measure of protection. The two end up in a damaged romance — eventually a sort of hostage marriage. Their relationship, which makes up the core of the film, is marked by fascinating ambiguities.
Is Ajla genuinely attracted to Danijel, or merely accepting the comparatively easier life he offers?
Is Danijel — who at one point looks ready to take his own turn with the captive women before recognizing Alja — a monster or a savior?
The movie makes clear that the Serb forces to which Danijel belongs are responsible for the bulk of the atrocities, yet it sometimes seems to sympathize with Danijel and some of his men. It’s a movie about evil, but not villains.
Miss Jolie, whose directorial style seems influenced by an older, slower, more intentional school of filmmaking, has the sense to let the questions play out, amplifying the ambiguities rather than explaining them.
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is the rare political movie that puts its characters first. There are few lectures, and little in the way of political history or context. In the closest thing to a political debate, Danijel defends his side, weakly, by arguing that their campaigns are “politics, not murder.” The movie, however, is long on murder and short on politics — perhaps the only reprieve the audience gets.
★ ★ ★ ½ (out of four)
TITLE: “In the Land of Blood and Honey”
CREDITS: Written and directed by Angelina Jolie
RATING: R for rape, unflinching violence, nudity
Jan 12, 2012
Freeman on pals Pitt and Jolie: 'I'm Uncle Morgan'
By Arienne Thompson, USA TODAY
Updated 1h 14m ago
By Jaap Buitendijk, Universal Studios
MORE: Freeman is both movie legend and buff
"I just really admire him. He's such a fantastic actor. He's not just a pretty boy; he's a really, really fine actor. And, he loves to do it, too," Freeman tells USA TODAY of his famous friend. "We bump into each other from time to time."
Freeman, who will receive the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday, is quick to remind that he's pretty chummy with Pitt's main squeeze, Angelina Jolie, too.
"I also worked with Angelina when we did Wanted, so I'm sort of in the family, as it were. (I'm) Uncle Morgan."
In addition to seeing the Jolie-Pitts at the Globes, Freeman will also hang with the couple on Jan. 21 at the Producers Guild Awards, where Jolie will accept the Stanley Kramer Award for her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey. "I'm going to be presenting it to her, so I get to hug her again," he says.
Angelina Jolie visited President @BarackObama yesterday. Ask her about it tonight during the #AngelinaJolieFilmChat! on.fb.me/AolPw5
Don't forget to talk to Angelina Jolie, live, right here, as you watch 30 Rock tonight—really: ow.ly/8r3NT #AngelinaJolieFilmChat
