June 23, 2003
No Man's Land
No Man's Land is the 2002 Foreign Language Academy Award winning
film from Bosnia-Herzegovina, by director Danis Tanovic. It tells the story of a Bosnian
and a Serb caught between the two lines, and unable to convince either
side to let them out. It is an interesting take on the "War is
Stupid" theme, and shows in a nutshell just how crazy that ugly
conflict got.
Chiki is part of a relief squad being led through the night and fog to the Serbian lines. They decide to halt until the sun comes up and, you guessed it, they find themselves right in the middle of the two lines, in No Man's Land. The Bosnians open fire with rifles and a tank, blowing Chiki into a trench that bisects the front lines. He's lightly wounded in the shoulder, but can't make his way out in the day time, due to the trench he is in being heavily mined. He decides to hole up until nightfall and make a break for his lines then.
Nino, a greenhorn, and a veteran are sent from the Bosnian line to check for any survivors. When they don't find any, they drag the body of Chiki's comrade into the trench and place a weight sensitive mine underneath it. The mine will blow up if the body is moved - a great joke "invented" by the veteran soldier. Chiki breaks up their little party, killing the vet and wounding Nino, although he can't bring himself to finish Nino off.
Chiki then makes Nino get up on the top of the trench stripped to his shorts waving a white flag, which brings down some artillery on them for their troubles. They both get quite a shock when it turns out Chiki's comrade Sera isn't dead after all, but severely wounded. But of course, due to the nature of the mine, they can't move him. So this time they both get out of the trenched, stripped to their shorts and waving the white flag. Both sides call in the UN forces to help out.
The head of the UN forces (played by the only familiar face in the movie Simon Callow) tells the local UN forces to back off, but the French head of the squad takes matters into his own hands and tries to help out. It all escalates when a reporter gets involved, and in the end it is a lot of noise and smoke signalling nothing.
It's a real nice movie, with some excellent sound work. The unknown (here anyway!) actors really pull their roles off, bickering and fighting like both sides did in the war. The movie avoids easy answers, like them becoming busom buddies or something, for a very low key ending. I'm not sure why it won the Oscar though, as I found both Amelie and Lagaan to have much more personality and verve. This was a very workmanlike movie, and it did what it set out to do. A good rental, even if the DVD is devoid of extras.
Buy No Man's Land from DVDPlanet
Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Flip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis, Serge-Henri Valcke, Simon Callow, Katrin Cartlidge
Captivating, extremely dark comic tale about two enemy soldiers forced to survive together while holed up in a trench. Posted by jdarnold at June 23, 2003 11:43 AM
