'In the Land of Blood and Honey'
First-time writer/director Angelina Jolie gives war a face and soul in gripping ‘Land of Blood and Honey’
Thursday, December 22 2011, 12:25 PM
The accomplishment, then, of “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Angelina Jolie’s gripping debut as a writer and director, is not how it dramatizes the division between Serbians and Bosnians once Yugoslavia succumbed to tribal bloodshed after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is how the film never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty.
In 1992, Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Muslim painter, leaves her sister and nephew to go to a nightclub, where she meets Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serbian policeman and Aija’s potential lover.
As they start to flirt and dance, a bomb explodes outside, and the division that has already engulfed Croatia erupts in Sarajevo.
Serb aggressors round up and shoot Bosnian men; the women are sent to camp.
Danijel, whose father (Rade Serbedzija) is a general in the Serbian Army, becomes an officer at one of those camps, where rape and demoralization are weapons of war. He at first attempts to keep Ajla safe, though her fellow war prisoners suffer a more cruel fate.
Later, after Alja escapes and is reunited with her sister, Danijel hears of her whereabouts and sends a patrol to bring her back. He then keeps her in his quarters, where she is able to paint and survive but, also, live in fear of the sadistic soldiers — and of Danijel.
If Alja’s treatment reflects the war’s physical atrocities, Jolie’s portrait of the ethically gray Danijel’s less-than-decent, morally improvised intentions is one of “Blood and Honey’s” representations of the war’s psychic toll.
This is not a love story torn asunder; it is, instead, about the soul of a people split apart.
Jolie’s actors, all from the former Yugoslavia and unknown in the West except for the superb veteran character actor Serbedzija, give magnetic, raw performances. Their commitment helps us through a movie that is often harrowing, never less than intense but important, one unafraid of moments too many have chosen to forget.
When actors decide to direct, it’s often a dicey proposition. Some are naturals (Clint Eastwood) but others turn out films that are unwatchable, self-indulgent hokum (anyone else sit through Nicholas Cage’s “Sonny” in 2002?).
So how does Angelina Jolie do with “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which marks her feature directing-screenwriting debut and landed her on the cover of Newsweek? It’s a respectable first effort, longer on earnestness than art, though much of that is due to her choice of topic material.
“Blood and Honey” is a drama set in Bosnia during and amidst the Bosnian War (1992-95). Jolie is well known for her involvement in global humanitarian causes, and here she takes on the notorious human-rights violations that occurred during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, including ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass rapes.
She does so through the prism of a complicated love story, one that begins in pre-war Sarajevo. That’s where Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serbian policeman, and Ajla (Zana Marjonovic), a Bosnian artist, strike sparks while on a first date at a nightclub. As they dance cheek to cheek, their budding romance is interrupted by a bombing, a harbinger of the carnage to come. (The film is in Bosnian, with English subtitles, though Jolie also shot an English-language version.)
Soon, war has broken out and Ajla is among a group of Bosnian women taken prisoner and moved to a military barracks where Danijel is a commander. The women have been brought there to serve as both servants and forced sexual partners for the men.
Danijel takes Ajla under his protection, making clear to his men that she’s off limits to them. The resulting relationship between the two is a fraught mixture of passion and distrust, with neither ever quite sure where the other stands emotionally. It would be impossible, given the brutality and senseless violence going on all around them and their own conflicted loyalties, for it to be otherwise.
More power to Jolie, both for taking on such a demanding subject and for not trying to pretty it up or poeticize it. But the central conceit, a wartime Romeo and Juliet story, around which she has built the movie often seems an awkwardly manufactured device, one that is at odds with the film’s almost documentary-like aspirations.
As a director, Jolie avoids showy angles or camera movements and instead concentrates on telling a story. She displays a solid sense of how to build narrative momentum, though she occasionally lets a scene to stretch on too long to allow an actor an extended moment (a fault shared by many other actors turned first-time directors).
Overall, Jolie has nothing to be embarrassed about and much of which to be proud with this movie. Even in moments where the film doesn’t quite work, she shows ample evidence of ambition and a discerning director’s eye.
REVIEW: Angelina Jolie Makes a Bleak Bosnian War Romance with In the Land of Blood and Honey
