No Man's Land Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 23rd, 2001
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The production notes for Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land give you an early indication of the kind of humor his film about the Bosnian-Serb conflict will contain. Tanovic explains that Serbs, Croats and Bosnians each have their own language, yet when they speak to one another, everybody understands each other perfectly...because it's the same language. The film, which earned Tanovic Best Screenplay honors at Cannes, blends the black war humor of Three Kings and M*A*S*H with that episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Mr. Burns are trapped together in a remote cabin.
Land is set in Bosnia in June 1993 and opens with a relief squad of Croatian front-line soldiers trying to make their way through the fog to replace their counterparts. When the fog gets too thick, they hunker down for the night, only to find themselves in the middle of the war the next morning when the haze lifts. Serb soldiers open fire on the group, killing everyone but Ciki (Branko Djuric), who takes one in the shoulder and seeks refuge in an abandoned trench nearby.
When two Serbs are sent to the trench to make sure there weren't any survivors, Ciki hides and manages to kill one and wound the other, but not before they roll a dead Croatian soldier onto an extremely dangerous landmine. Nino (Rene Bitorajac) and Ciki, sworn enemies, are now stuck together and begin to bicker about who started the war, but their argument is interrupted when Cera (Filip Sovagovic), the dead soldier on top of the landmine, turns out not to be as deceased as they had originally thought.
Granted, Land doesn't sound like a laugh riot so far, but things take a turn for the strange when the United Nations (or Smurfs, because of their light blue flag) are called in to rescue Cera, only to find the squabbling Ciki and Nino, along with Jane Livingston, a Christiane Amanpour wannabe (Katrin Cartlidge, From Hell's Dark Annie) from Global News who overheard the UN's radio communication and wants to expose their attempt not to intervene (because they're only there to "expedite the peace process"). The situation becomes increasingly ludicrous, especially when Livingston broadcasts about the absurdity of war and then sticks the microphone in Nino's face and asks, "How do you feel? Are you tired?"
The Bosnian Tanovic, who is making a remarkably assured feature-film directorial debut here, doesn't choose sides, treating the battling soldiers as equals, but definitely raking the UN and media over the coals. While many people in this country aren't terribly familiar with the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Tanovic makes Land accessible and compelling enough for audiences everywhere to appreciate.
1:38 - R for violence and language
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