Audio Video News

Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis, Simon Callow, Katrin Cartlidge. Directed by Danis Tanovic. Aspect ratios: 2.35:1 (anamorphic) and 1.33:1. Dolby Digital 5.1 (Bosnian, Serbo-Croatian, French, English). 127 minutes. 2001. United Artists 1003329. R. $26.98.

Three wounded soldiers—two Bosnian veterans and a Serbian recruit—are trapped in a trench on the front lines during the 1993 war following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Cera (Filip Sovagovic), one of the Bosnians, lies on his back on a live mine. He can't move without setting it off and killing himself and his two bellicose companions; they, in turn, must cooperate in order to ensure their own survival.

Thus begins a sometimes satirical tale of the insanity of war. All the elements we've come to expect from modern war movies are here: inexplicable motives, overwhelming passions, bumbling bureaucrats, heartless officers, and self-serving journalists. Yet none of it feels hackneyed or staged, perhaps because the film grew out of the personal experience of writer and director Danis Tanovic, who served as a photographer during the long, brutal conflict. The essence of the screenplay is based on actual events, he has said.

The story takes place in a single day. The film is a powerful exploration of how political sentiments become personal, murderous intentions. Ciki, the hot-tempered Bosnian (wonderfully portrayed by Branko Djuric), and Nino, the Serbian greenhorn (Rene Bitorajac), almost succeed in killing each other several times during the course of the day's events in the trench. They also have moments of near-friendship. During a lull in the hostilities, the enemies discover that they have a common friend from the town of Banja Luka—a woman named Sanja, who has wisely left the country. There are comic moments, too—as when the two combatants strip to their shorts and dance around waving their T-shirts as white flags in the hope of attracting help without attracting artillery fire.

Help—such as it is—eventually arrives in the form of UN peacekeepers, followed by a gaggle of reporters with the instincts of vultures. In a subplot reminiscent of the 1951 Billy Wilder film The Big Carnival, in which the young Kirk Douglas played a reporter sent to interview a man trapped in a collapsed mine, British journalist Jane Livingston (Katrin Cartlidge) does her best to get herself and her cameraman as close to the desperate situation as possible. As in Three Kings, the ever-shifting balance of power between the media and the military affects decisions made at the highest level. In the case of No Man's Land, decisions made by UN commanders determine the ultimate outcome of this day in the trenches. The final scene is one of the most powerful and memorable in the history of cinema.

The DVD is a gorgeous transfer from the film, with superb color and detail. The countryside where the action takes place looks amazingly like coastal California in the spring. The few musical selections are spare, haunting Balkan tunes, one of them written and performed by Danis Tanovic. The only extra feature worth viewing is the original trailer, if only as an example of just how far wrong marketing people can go when given the opportunity: comic snippets backed with pseudo-military music played by a circus band, strung together in a misguided effort to sell the film as a comedy. Although it does have some funny moments—the language barrier between French peacekeepers and Serbian soldiers, a British commanding officer dallying with his bimbo secretary, an ongoing battle of wills between Livingston and a French UN officer, the ebb and flow of tempers in the trench—No Man's Land is deadly serious. United Artists' marketing department apparently felt that the American public wouldn't buy real people in real trouble.

Tanovic has said that, during the war, he felt that if he kept pointing his camera and snapping the shutter, the truth would somehow prevail. His perseverance and clear vision shine through in No Man's Land, the deserving winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and recipient of many other prestigious prizes, including Best Screenplay at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, the 2002 Best Foreign Film award from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, and the 2002 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Many film fans were disappointed that the French romantic comedy Amélie didn't win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In my opinion, the Academy voted correctly. Amélie is delightful, but it's as airy as a French pasty. No Man's Land is a substantive work, among the best war films ever made, and has, in fact, already assumed its rightful place among the greats of the genre. "Shoot-'em-up" entertainment it is not. Tanovic had the courage to make a film that asks plenty of hard questions while providing no answers. No Man's Land should be viewed in the same courageous spirit.