Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Other than horror about what happened during the four-year siege of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, during which Serbian militia in the hills surrounding the city targeted civilians (while other proponents of "Greater Serbia" ran death camps and committed other forms of genocide), I'm not sure what I think about Michael Witterbottom's docu-drama "Welcome to Sarajevo" (1997). My first reaction was: here we go again with the Anglos the focus (Beyond Rangoon, Saigon: Year of the Cat, Biko, Salvador, Under Fire, Dances with Wolves, The Killing Fields, The Quiet American, The Painted Veil, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The Sand Pebbles, etc., etc., etc.).

A typecast Woody Harrelson as an American journalist named Flynn is, admittedly, entertaining. Flynn learns the language (which seems untypical of Americans abroad) and gets involved (which is more typical). The dry British reporter Michael Henderson (on whose memoir the movie is based), played by Stephen Dillane (The Hours) does not learn the language, but becomes an advocate, pressing the story of an orphanage under fire. Henderson becomes obsessed with getting children out. In that the Bosnian Serbians want Sarajevo (and Bosnia) emptied of non-Serbs, not evacuating the city is what the non-Serbian residents insist upon.

Henderson particularly wants to get one girl out and is Emira Nusevich out. He can't end the killing, but focuses on rescuing this one girl. An aid worker, Nina (Marisa Tomei), gets permission from what she thinks is all sides to evacuate a busload of orphans with relatives abroad and babies to be adopted. Complications ensue that I won't "spoil."

Can you just keep rolling the camera is a question that piqued my interest a few months ago in watching "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On" and, again, in rewatching "Medium Cool," in which journalists lacked immunity (though not to the extent of in Sarajevo during the Serbian siege). Henderson becomes an advocate, rejecting not only the impossible aspiration of "objectivity," but any attempt to be "fair" to those killing children.

Henderson is a righteous man, but is not a particularly interesting character. Flynn is more interesting (and/or Harrelson is more adept at scene-stealing). Henderson's local driver/translator, Risto Bavich (played by the very handsome Croatia-born Goran Vicnjic [The Deep End, ER, Dr. Sleep]) is far more complex a character, though given far too little room in the film. A film about him and his housemates would, IMHO, be far more interesting than the celebration of a British do-gooder. Can it be that audiences would rather watch Stephen Dillane than Goran Vicnjic? I'm also more interested in the reputed gangster "Jacket" (Igor Dzambazov), who provides crucial help to Henderson in his quest to protect Emira.

The news footage that is intercut with the Henderson/Emira story also is often more compelling than watching Henderson agonize (or intervene). However, the news footage is very confusing as it goes back and forth from George H. W. Bush (whose Secretary of State, James Baker, greenlighted Yugoslavia doing whatever was necessary to prevent secessions) to Bill Clinton (who got involved in ending the genocide and establishing the Dayton Accords), along with footage of UK M John Major. The jumbling of chronology strikes me as anti-historical rather than ahistorical. (The mixture of fictional and factual footage, of film actors and nonactors in "Medium Cool" was at least in chronological order!)

One would not know from the movie that religious differences were part of the rationales for slaughter, or that the violence had any roots in the Serbian-dominated communist state that broke apart after the death of Tito and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire (of which Yugoslavia was not exactly a part, but a parallel). While taking shots at France, the UK, and the US for standing by, there is not the slightest indication that the post-Soviet Russian government did more than greenlight the Serbian war against secession and that the first Bust swung to backing Croatians (primarily against Serbs, but also against Muslims).

Well, what happened in the fission of Yugoslavia was a horrendous bloodletting for which there is plenty of blame to go around, and Winterbottom's intervention (attempted examination) does little to clarify the larger picture or even the question of what journalists should do to increase interest in genocide they witness. The movie shows something of what a frightening place Sarajevo was during the siege and the reign of terror euphemized as "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia.

I don't know which way to round my 3.5 rating for the inchoate movie. I thought it was better than Winterbottom's also inchoate "Tristam Shandy" and, since there are at least riveting parts and interesting characters (even though they are underdeveloped: Flynn, Nina, and a number of the Bosnian ones), and so few movies about what happened in the early-1990s in the former Yugoslavia (however, there are "Before the Rain" and "No Man's Land") I guess I'll round up.

The DVD has a somehat dizzying (jump-cut) documentary in which various journalists talk about what drew/draws them to war coverage, advocacy vs. attempted objectivity or fairness, and a few comments on what it was like to be a target along with everyone else in Sarajevo, ca. 1992. Like the movie, it has some interesting and though-provoking bits but is less than satisfying.

© 2007, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD