Reviews

On acting. Howard Feinstein said in his review for Daily Screen that "... one selling point could be the foregrounding of an outstanding portrayal of a Bosnian Serb camp commander and civilian cop, Danijel, by the Bosnian Serb actor Goran Kostic, despite the sometimes ludicrous plot situations into which he is thrust. His physical agility, soft but masculine face, piercing blue eyes, and remarkable capacity to shift moods in a split second recall a younger Ralph Fiennes..." I respectfully disagree. Even assuming that some of the plot situations are ludicrous, I think that Kostic makes them even more ludicrous by his remarkably unconvincing performance. It didn't really matter whether he was hanging out with his comrades, developing his supposedly amorous relationship with Ajla, which in reality is nothing more than sexual slavery, or just being an obedient son to his bigoted father who happens to be the army general, it was flat and extremely lame, even on the most basic level of making it believable to the viewer. Now, even if Jolie the scriptwriter intended to emasculate the camp commander and empower the victim, which I think she did, he sabotaged it all the way. I failed to detect shifts in his moods from the moments when he was recreating the bygone times pretending to love and protect her to those when he hated her guts simply for not being of his own kind or for suspecting her loyalty. For me, Kostic's portrayal of Danijel's split-second transformation from a seemingly protective and affectionate to selfish and outright aggressive self in his dealings with Ajla, his alternatively authoritative and submissive personality in the rapport with his men and his father respectively is just pathetic. Yet, nowhere is his hugely unimpressive performance more exposed than in the movie's final scene, which, to be fair to Howard, is lost on the foreign viewer watching the English version of the film or the one in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language with English subtitles. Finally, if any of the lead actors in this movie deserves praise for outstanding portrayal of her character, it is Zana Marjanovic, who, similarly to Natasa Petrovic in another recent movie on the subject of sexual violence during the war, Juanita Wilson's As If I Am Not There, delivers a solid performance. If these two movies, and Tanovic's Circus Columbia with Jelena Stupljanin in it, are anything to go by, young female acting talent in the Balkans is much superior and seems to be ahead of the game compared to their male colleagues.

On insistence on sticking to historical facts on film. Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds is a good example. Responding to the critics who slammed the movie as trivialization of Holocaust, shallow propaganda, caricature of a gruesome war, the movie that promotes terrorism and torture, a fantasy that, if it were to be indulged at the expense of the truth of history, would be the most inglorious bastardization of all, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of Simon Wisenthal Center said: "Jews have to recognize that Hollywood is in the entertainment business, and they have a right to entertain their audience. It's presumptuous for us to become the czars that tell the entertainment community what kinds of films they can make." Tarantino for his part said: "I'm telling you it's fairy tale right at the top... Whoever gets it, gets it: whoever doesn't, I don't give a damn." Yet, in spite of it being a fantasy, a fairy tale that starts off with once upon a time, it is more than just that, at least judging by the experience of actors who participated in the making of this movie. Melanie Laurent, French actress who plays the character of Shosanna described her experience in the following words: "I'm Jewish. I read the script together with my grandfather and he told me: 'You have to make that movie, please.' So, it was not just for me, it was for my family. And when he (Tarantino) picked me, I'm the face of the Jewish vengeance. I'm sure my grandfather will love the movie."

On resistance to giving a human face to the enemy. Giving human face to suicide bombers on the screen did not win Hany Abu-Assad, the director of 2005 film Paradise Now many fans. On the contrary, he was faced with a barrage of attacks from day one of the filming. During the filming one of the Palestinian factions acted on a rumor that the movie was anti-suicide bombers and they kidnapped the movie's local location manager and demanded that the film's crew leave Nablus. Owing to the movie's huge success, Golden Globe award and Oscar nomination in the best foreign film category, critiques started coming from the other side of the border too. In her comment on the supposedly anti-Semitic character of the film Irit Linor wrote: "... And so we can rightly call 'Paradise Now' a Nazi film: it spins a thin thread of understanding for those who resorted to desperate measures to solve the problem of the constant, unremitting evil of the Jews..." Fed up with these and similar attacks coming from both camps, in response to the question about the message he wanted to communicate through this film. Hany Abu-Assad said: "I don't have messages in movies, messages I leave for the postman."

A concluding thought. For starters, it would be good if we could at least try and see these movies, regardless of whether they are brilliant or flawed, more from the artistic point of view, more as a human thing. The alternative is to wonder why Lubna Azabal's character Suha in Paradise Now did not speak with a Palestinian accent, why Cristoph Waltz's Jew Hunter in Inglorious Basterds is a multidimensional character who speaks several languages, or why those sniping and shelling the city of Sarajevo in In the Land of Blood and Honey had to have such evil grins on their faces.

Being a fan of Danis Tanovic's films, I couldn't wait to see his third movie „Triage". I finally watched it last night, of course, a pirated copy of the film, which still did not spoil the film for me, not even one bit. The reason why I mention these technicalities is basically just to say that not even poor sound quality compounded by a frustrating inability to appreciate fully the whole atmospheric environment that Danovic creates for the viewers with much finesse and eye for detail, takes away from the fact that this is simply a film worth watching. I tend to think that movie aficionado from the third world, being forced to choose between watching pirated copies of films that never make it to the local cinemas and not watching them at all, are actually watching these films stripped of all their non-essential elements. If the movie passes this test, I think it can be safely said that everyone's time, the film crew's time and the audience's time has been used to a good effect.

Before seeing it, I knew that the movie was about a photographer going to the war zone. That alone would have been enough for me to decide against spending 99 minutes of my otherwise super exciting life on it had someone else directed it. I say this because I myself watched them take photos of people running for their lives in the streets of Sarajevo. I vividly remember one of them taking a photo of a woman running over the stretch of the road that was exposed to sniper fire with canisters in her hands unsuspecting that having reached safety she would start hitting him full force with those canisters out of sheer frustration. On the one hand, it's not like he could have asked for her consent to be photographed in not too dignified a pose. On the other hand, one may say that being too preoccupied with survival she is not even remotely thinking at that moment about how this and no other photo may turn out to be the most symbolic of her plight. Not to digress too far, Colin Farrel's character in the movie and his best friend are off to Kurdistan to capture with their cameras yet another offensive in the two centuries long history of warfare in that country. This is the land where the situation spinned out of control long time ago. These are the people who live out their existence stripped of any real choices. It is this lack of choice and the bravery with which ordinary men like Dr Talzani and Cristopher Lee's character face it that form important aspects of this anti-war film that is so much more than that. As for Mark Walsh (Colin Farrel), his drama is taken to the extreme, probably the extremest I've seen on film recently. I will stop here in order not to spoil the film for those of you who may read this and haven't seen it yet.

Finally, let me briefly respond to some of the criticism leveled against „Triage". In some comments it is said that it should have been shot in Kurdistan with more Kurds in it to add to its authenticity. Well, production-dictated requirements aside, „No Man's Land" was shot in Slovenia and it does not take away from the movie's authenticity. Besides, he wants his movies to be universal, hence the references to different places across the globe in this movie. As for the comment about the relationship between characters being strained and used solely for the purpose of delivering big lines, I must say that I did not detect that strain while watching the movie and though it may be because of the poor sound quality of the pirated copy, I'm more inclined to attribute it to Tanovic's habit of using dialogue as if he was staging a play and not directing a film. To those who call him an amateur, Tanovic so far worked with Katrin Cartlidge, Miki Manojlovic, Emannuele Beart, Branko Djuric, Colin Farrel, is friends with great film-makers such as Mike Leigh, made his three feature films in three different languages and won positive acclaim at big international film festivals. I rest my case.

This is no review of a film critic, but it is only an unpretentious attempt to have a closer look at the film which I find perfect. The film is "The Visitor" by Thomas McCarthy which I was so happy to have seen at this year's Sarajevo Film Festival. Before going to the open air cinema, which interestingly enough is fitted in the small inner yard of the Sarajevo Fire Brigade and frequented by the cinema-goers only at the time of the Festival, I read the synopsis and user comments at the IMDb. It is something that I always do and to tell you the truth I had big expectations of this film, which was not the case with some other much hyped movies such as Three Monkeys or Synecdoche, New York. Now, after seeing The Visitor and after having a couple of days to chew on it, I can tell you that the film was bigger, much bigger than my expectations. It taught me two things: first, that having big expectations will not necessarily result in a flop and second, that having big expectations may result in an even bigger thrill when the curtain goes down.

Cinematic perfection is such a rare experience and once you do experience it you want to at least try to capture what makes it perfect while a million other films fall short of getting there. Well, first, the story is brilliant, told with much finesse and with no redundant subplots or unnecessary characters. The story is what matters the most, at least to me, whether it is a novel or a film. In Three Monkeys for instance, there is a lot of praise about photography, but the story is flawed and the slow pace at which the movie develops is downright boring, especially towards the end of the movie. I mean Dogville was slow-paced too, but at no point did it become boring and it basically dealt with the same central theme, that of human relations. It is obvious that Ceylan labored over the ending of his movie while McCarthy seems to be in full control all the time. Ceylan uses the long-dead boy of the family invoking comparisons to Tarkovsky while McCarthy needs no such cinematic artifice to tell us of the drama that goes on in front of our eyes. While Ceylan resorts to using a clichéd sound of the train foreboding the impending tragedy McCarthy makes smooth transitions without ever announcing what comes next. Rarely does it happen in any film that a subplot introduced halfway through the film completely, I mean com-ple-te-ly, steals the show. Well done, Mr McCarthy! This film works on so many different levels: being a strong social critique, love story, an account of both alienation with members of one's own society and bondage with members of a seemingly alien culture, dehumanization/re-humanization at work, a celebration of our basic humanity (and of a djembe drum).

As for the Richard Jenkins character in the film, a stunning performance from an actor whom you have seen so many times in supporting roles, but never in a lead one. Similarly to his director, he is in full control all the time and masterfully leads us through the movie. Supported by a great cast, he shines in a role which appears as if it was written for him. Finally, I must add one more thing to the list of things I learnt from this film: even when you anticipate the ending (I think the element of surprise is generally overrated) the actual delivery of the finale can be mind-blowing.

Just saw Tanovic's "L'Enfer" last night at Sarajevo Film Festival. Being a Bosnian himself and being the only Director from this region who has ever won an Oscar (which is a source of envy on the part of many film-makers, critics and others in the industry who use every opportunity to blemish him and his work in sensationalism-prone media), he received a seating (unfortunately, not standing) ovation from the crowd. In my view, he deserves a standing ovation for his rendering of the script of a legendary Polish film-maker, Kiezslowski.

This is Tanovic's second movie after an awe-inspiring Oscar-winning debut (for those of you who do not hold Oscar in high esteem, he won a dozen awards from film academies and organizations all over the place). One might say that "L'Enfer" is a perfectly French movie with its setting, acting and pace, just as No Man's Land perfectly captured the essence of Bosnian predicament at the time. I was impressed by Tanovic's ability to make his movies very much recognizable, and yet retaining that note of universality that is very much needed for full appreciation by the international audience.

Nothing in this movie seems redundant or out of place to me, and everything from the opening scene, which is bordering on spectacular, down to the last words of Carol Bouqet with which the movie ends is in service of good film-making. Overall, Tanovic's "L'Enfer" is a worthwhile cinematic experience, a modern tragedy well-captured by a director with an eye for a detail, and finally an exciting second movie that will be, I'm sure, appreciated by movie-goers around the globe. An intelligent, likable, and well-executed piece! I could not wish for more.