MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Land of Blood and Honey’ a compelling story of love and hate
Published: Friday, January 6, 2012
Angelina Jolie's 'Blood and Honey' paints a searing picture of war's horror
By Robert Horton, Herald Movie Critic, WA
Give Angelina Jolie credit for not taking an easy road in her first narrative film as a director. "In the Land of Blood and Honey," which she also scripted, is a brutal and not at all simple story of lives swept aside by the horrors of the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The filmmaker does not hold back on depicting those horrors.
A brief, sweet prologue introduces us to two people who come together for a dance, on the eve of the war's outbreak. The evening ends with the bombing of the club they dance in, and everything that follows is streaked with the blood of war.
The two people are Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Muslim helping her sister with a new baby, and Danijel (Goran Kostic), a soldier in the Serbian army. A few months later, they are on opposite sides, as she is rounded up and imprisoned with other Bosnian women in the military camp he presides over.
Danijel still has feelings for Ajla, and he protects her from the violence, including systematic rape, that the other women are subjected to. At some point she becomes almost a personal prisoner of his, kept in a private room on the grounds.
I think it's wrong to describe what goes on between the two of them as a "love story," as some commentators have casually done. Jolie is attempting to explore a huge range of ideas here, from the choices left to people who have no power (we can make up our own minds about whether Ajla cares for Danijel, or whether her survival instincts have taken over) to the toll that war takes on the bodies of women.
There are sequences that attempt to give perspective to the tangled conflict in the former Yugoslavia, but these tend to be the weakest in the film (although Rade Serbedzija, as Danijel's military father, is casually terrifying in describing the depths of Serbian rage). A two-hour movie can't possibly give every perspective anyway.
What Jolie focuses on with greater success is the ground-level experience of people who are warped by the effects of war. Thanks to the stunning performance by Zana Marjanovic and a strong one by Goran Kostic, that two-person story does come to life, and not entirely in predictable ways.
The film has its weak passages and even some incoherence. But it connects at the strangest moments: soldiers visiting a looted art museum, for instance, and seeing all the enlightened creations of European culture, including an exhibit on the Olympic Games held in Sarajevo in 1984, less than a decade before the monstrous events we're watching.
Those kinds of juxtapositions -- including the film's very title -- provide powerful jolts to any vanity we might have about how civilized we are.
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" (3 stars)
A brutal story set during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with particular focus on the tortured relationship between a Bosnian woman and her Serbian captor. Writer-director Angelina Jolie does not hold back on the horrors, but she's best at the ground-level view of how war has completely warped the lives of these two particular people. In Serbian and Bosnian, with English subtitles.
Rating: R, for nudity, violence, subject matter.
I found writer-director Angelina Jolie's IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY upsetting but often moving. aintitcool.com/node/52508
Capone found writer-director Angelina Jolie's rape-infused IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY upsetting but often moving.
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I'll say one thing for Angelina Jolie, when she selected the subject of
her writing-directing debut, she didn't pull any punches in selecting
the unspeakably brutal subject of the Bosnian War of the 1990s, which
forever changed the face of the Balkan region, due in large part to rape
being used by the Bosnian Serb Army as a weapon of female submission.
Say what you will about the depiction of rape in any film, but Jolie
does not flinch when it comes to not only showing it but also to making
it painfully clear that any time a man and a woman are in the same room
together at any point in this film, the threat of rape is in the room
with them. It makes for a sickening but highly effective film-watching
experience.
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY actually begins as a
story of new love in pre-war Bosnia, in this case between Serb Danijel
(Goran Kostic) and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a beautiful Muslim artist,
who meet in a club which is subsequently bombed while their seduction is
in full swing. Months later, after the ethnic conflict has begun, they
meet again after Ajla is rounded up with other women and held captive,
essentially as sex slaves for the Serbian soldiers. When Danijel spots
her, he immediately lets it be known that she belongs to him. He is the
commanding officer and the son of an important general (Rade
Serbedszija), so his underlings obey him assuming he wants to only have
sex with her. In fact, he protects her, they talk, and he allows her to
draw and paint in private. Because of who he is, she is extremely
distrustful of him, but eventually she breaks down, and the two have
something approximating a relationship, albeit a secret one.
If
the whole story seems a tad bit creepy, that's because it is. IN THE
LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY is a perplexing tale in which we're never quite
sure who to empathize with. Of course, we feel for the women being
brutalized by the Serbs, but they are almost pushed to the side once
this love affair is rekindled. I wanted to identify on some level with
Ajla, who really has no choice but to submit to this usually kind man
for survival's sake. I think Jolie even wants us to feel for Danijel,
who is put in an impossible situation and does his best to protect this
woman he cares about. But I felt little doubt that he would have
sacrificed her in a heartbeat if it meant not getting caught. But
perhaps this shady morality is part of what makes this movie compelling.
I actually enjoyed feeling conflicted, and for better or worse, this is
a film that one can never accuse of being boring or sentimental.
But other than an authentic history lesson, I'm not exactly sure what
we're supposed to learn or take away from IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND
HONEY. There are vague condemnations of the outside world refusing to
intervene, but the United Nations failing to act on behalf of
humanitarian needs is nothing new. And by focusing on this single
relationship, I think Jolie loses the opportunity to give a true sense
of the scope of these atrocities.
There's a scene near the
beginning of the film where a woman is pulled out of a lineup of women
shortly after they arrive in the building where they are being held.
With barely a change of expression, her captor rips her clothes off and
rapes her on a table in front of all the other women, who avert their
eyes as quickly as they can but can still hear the woman's crying and
screams. It's a shocking moment that will forever be burned in my brain,
but the emotional and dramatic weight of the scene is never equalled
again in the movie, nor does Jolie capitalize on the stark reality she
has just forced us to face. I'm not sure I can recommend the film to
everyone; it's simply too harsh for even the strongest of us. But there
is no denying the Jolie is a fearless filmmaker who with pure guts makes
up for what she may lack in cinematic sophistication. I think she'll
get better behind the camera if she continues to direct, and IN THE LAND
OF BLOOD AND HONEY does what it sets out to accomplish, even if what it
accomplishes is extremely difficult to witness.
-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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Director Angelina Jolie scores near-hit with ‘Land of Blood’
A mighty start
By James Verniere
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” Rated R. At Kendall Square Cinema: B+
An
impressively solid writing and directing debut from Angelina Jolie, “In
the Land of Blood and Honey” is the hybrid of movie hybrids. A film
acted in a language not spoken by its writer-director, it tells the
story of the ethnic cleansing that followed the breakup of the former
Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet empire. Set in the first half of
the 1990s, the film is also a modern-day retelling of the Romeo and
Juliet story with a bit of Orpheus and Eurydice and Tristan and Isolde
added to the mix.
Ajla (Sarajevo-born Bosnian Zana Marjanovic), the film’s heroine, is a beautiful 28-year-old Bosnian Muslim. She is also an artist and painter, living with her mother and sister. The sister dotes upon an infant son. Ajla is also engaged in a romance with a Bosnian Serb named Danijel (Sarajevo-born Goran Kostic of “Taken”), a soldier and captain, whose father Nebojsa (Croatian-born Rade Serbedzija) commands the Serbian troops in Bosnia and is a proponent of the genocidal policies.
In a scene that is altogether too expository, Nebojsa explains the centuries-long, blood-soaked history of the Serb-Muslim struggle in the area, including the Muslim alliance with the Nazis during World War II, and the reasons why Serbs should exterminate their historical enemies, even if they are neighbors and even relatives by marriage. It’s all completely logical and completely insane.
But why is he telling it to Danijel, who presumably heard these stories at his father’s knee?
As the conflict engulfs Ajla’s neighborhood, several Muslim men in her building are taken away and machine-gunned off-camera by Serb soldiers. Ajla and other women are taken captive, imprisoned on a Serb army base, used as slave labor and raped. Danijel, however, finds ways to protect Ajla.
But their love flies in the face of his father’s genocidal principles, and trouble is bound to happen.
It does, and for the most part the film tells its story well, if too predictable and often plodding.
We hear references to Chetniks and Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb politician currently imprisoned for war crimes. We see death squads clean out a village and watch Serb snipers cut down Sarajevo civilians. One Serb soldier wears a jaunty Santa Claus cap. Another grins diabolically as he blasts Bosnian resistance fighters smoked out of a burning building.
If it sounds unpleasant, it is, and I am afraid that the romance of Ajla and Danijel is not interesting or affecting enough to keep the film from feeling like a grim slog.
We know from “A Mighty Heart” that Jolie likes this sort of global, current-event-related subject matter. The job is to transmute it into art, and though “In the Land of Blood and Honey” is engaging and well-made, Danijel loses our sympathy long before the end, and the film ends up feeling more like a fictionalized history lesson in the evil that men do than a tragic love story.
(“In the Land of Blood and Honey” contains nudity, sexually suggestive scenes and extreme violence.)
Ajla (Sarajevo-born Bosnian Zana Marjanovic), the film’s heroine, is a beautiful 28-year-old Bosnian Muslim. She is also an artist and painter, living with her mother and sister. The sister dotes upon an infant son. Ajla is also engaged in a romance with a Bosnian Serb named Danijel (Sarajevo-born Goran Kostic of “Taken”), a soldier and captain, whose father Nebojsa (Croatian-born Rade Serbedzija) commands the Serbian troops in Bosnia and is a proponent of the genocidal policies.
In a scene that is altogether too expository, Nebojsa explains the centuries-long, blood-soaked history of the Serb-Muslim struggle in the area, including the Muslim alliance with the Nazis during World War II, and the reasons why Serbs should exterminate their historical enemies, even if they are neighbors and even relatives by marriage. It’s all completely logical and completely insane.
But why is he telling it to Danijel, who presumably heard these stories at his father’s knee?
As the conflict engulfs Ajla’s neighborhood, several Muslim men in her building are taken away and machine-gunned off-camera by Serb soldiers. Ajla and other women are taken captive, imprisoned on a Serb army base, used as slave labor and raped. Danijel, however, finds ways to protect Ajla.
But their love flies in the face of his father’s genocidal principles, and trouble is bound to happen.
It does, and for the most part the film tells its story well, if too predictable and often plodding.
We hear references to Chetniks and Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb politician currently imprisoned for war crimes. We see death squads clean out a village and watch Serb snipers cut down Sarajevo civilians. One Serb soldier wears a jaunty Santa Claus cap. Another grins diabolically as he blasts Bosnian resistance fighters smoked out of a burning building.
If it sounds unpleasant, it is, and I am afraid that the romance of Ajla and Danijel is not interesting or affecting enough to keep the film from feeling like a grim slog.
We know from “A Mighty Heart” that Jolie likes this sort of global, current-event-related subject matter. The job is to transmute it into art, and though “In the Land of Blood and Honey” is engaging and well-made, Danijel loses our sympathy long before the end, and the film ends up feeling more like a fictionalized history lesson in the evil that men do than a tragic love story.
(“In the Land of Blood and Honey” contains nudity, sexually suggestive scenes and extreme violence.)
-— jverniere@bostonherald.com
The Land of Blood & Honey opens tomorrow - lets keep the convo going as @GlobalFundWomen suggests #lbhsf
SocChangeFilms SocialChangeFilmFest
Speechless aftr screening land of blood & honey. Intense story of genocide in 1990s Bosnia - Jolie focuses on violence ag women #lbhsf
In the Land of Blood and Honey - highly recommended. Big thanks to @GlobalFundWomen for hosting the screening.
brilliant interview.... Angelina Jolie's 'Land of Blood and Honey' - Bloomberg TV+ for iPad bloom.bg/s1dlv7
