No Man’s Land, directed by Danis Tanovic, won the 2001 Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category as well as the Golden Globe. It also took the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. It is a highly intelligent film, with a rich mix of drama, dark humor, irony, metaphor, and even something of a paradoxical message. The subject matter of this film is the Bosnian conflict (that pitted Bosnia against Serbia), which was also the backdrop for the Hollywood film Behind Enemy Lines, a rather shallow and unrealistic action piece of the kind that sometimes seems to be the Hollywood specialization. While Behind Enemy Lines was quite successful commercially, No Man’s Land played mainly in the United States in art houses, despite the prodigious acclaim it received from critics and festival juries alike. I’d wager that if twenty American movie-goers were picked at random (or even selected from only those professing an interest in war films) and were shown both films, the majority would pick No Man’s Land as the better one. I don’t accept that the low average quality of what American audiences see is entirely due to limited receptiveness to better fare. I also don’t place the blame on the system of distribution. Films will typically get distributed as widely as their predicted market will bear. One significant factor in what Americans go to the theater to see is how they are made aware of new films – how their interest gets sparked in the first place. A new Hollywood blockbuster generally creates a stir which quickly reverberates by word of mouth, articles by critics, and television entertainment magazines and review programs. Critics who really want to serve their respective readerships should try to be on the lookout for quality films that have been under-hyped rather than simply jumping on the bandwagon for the latest Hollywood extravaganza. Here at Epinions, we ought to be writing mostly on films with fewer than twenty reviews already in the database, rather than adding the 342nd review of Lord of the Rings or another blockbuster. Most reviews beyond the tenth simply will not advance the overall value of the site. Now, I’ll get down off my soapbox!

Historical Background: No Man’s Land was filmed in slovenia by Danis Tanovic, a former Bosnian soldier himself. The script was written by Tanovic and this was his first feature film. Obviously he had a message that he was burning to get out. Tanovic's prior film experience was as a cameraman documenting events of the war. One particularly impressive aspect of No Man’s Land is the even-handedness with which Tanovic portrays the Serbs and the Bosnians. I wonder if his former colleagues in the Bosnian army thought this balance a kind of betrayal. In any case, it is successful cinematic technique, given the point he is bent on making.

The Story: It is 1993 and the Bosnian conflict is at its most intense. As the film opens, a squad of Bosnian relief soldiers trying to reach their own front lines are caught in a dense nighttime fog. The guide decides that to proceed further would be too dangerous. They will wait for the first light of dawn. The soldiers joke with one another and share a cigarette and finally catch a bit of sleep. When the dawn arrives (product of a lovely sunrise), the hapless squad suddenly realizes that they have strayed too close to the enemy’s front line position. Instantly, they are being mowed down by rifle shots, machine guns, and artillery. Only one, Tchiki (Branko Djuric), reaches a vacated trench, with just a wound to his shoulder. He retrieves the apparent corpse of the only other member of his unit, Tsera (Filip Sovagovic), who almost made it to the same bunker. The soldiers on the Bosnian front line quickly realize that their relief unit had veered off course and is now slaughtered. From the Serbian side, the situation looks pretty much the same, but they have the advantage of the rising sun to their backs. With the Bosnian’s relatively blinded, they will send out a couple of soldiers to make sure there are no survivors.

The Serbian officer selects two men – an experienced man and a brand new recruit, Nino (Reno Bitorajac), whose name the others haven’t even yet learned. The pair of Serbian soldiers reach the trench in no man’s land. Tchiki, tending to his wound in a small bunker, is separated from his weapon, which he foolishly left outside. He can only silently listen and hope that he is not discovered. The Serbian soldiers set a landmine under the body of Tsera. It is a so-called “bouncing Betty” kind of device that explodes not when weight is placed on the trigger but when that weight is removed. When the Serbian soldiers continue down the trench, Tchiki retrieves his weapon and surprises them when they return, killing the older one and wounding Nino. Sorely tempted to finish Nino off, he thinks better of it, realizing that he may need Nino in some way to extract himself from this predicament. He makes Nino strip to his boxer shorts and dance outside the trench waving a white flag, hoping that will discourage fire from the Serbs, but instead, artillery shells rain down on their position. The conversations between Nino and Tchiki are fascinating, as each predictably asserts that the full blame for the conflict rests with the other side, each citing atrocities committed by the other side, each insisting that the other side started the war.

The already tense situation now takes a turn for the worse. A moan from Tsera reveals that he was not, in fact, dead but merely in shock. If he rolls over or gets up, they will all be blown up by the landmine. Tchiki goes to Tsera’s aid. While Tchiki is thus distracted, Nino grabs his weapon and seizes the upper hand. Still later, Ciki regains his weapon establishing a momentary equality and an uneasy truce. Both shoulder their weapons, for the time being. Viewers can fantasize, at this moment, that this film may go the clichéd route of enemies learning to work together for their common good. Tchiki and Nino each strip to their boxers and wave flags – each toward their own front line. It is now apparent to both sides that whatever is happening in the trench in no man’s land involves soldiers from both sides. An uneasy ceasefire is established and the U.N. observers are called in.

The U.N. force is headed in the field by a French sergeant, Marchand (Georges Siatidis), and overseen by a British officer, Soft (Simon Calow), back at the U.N. field office. The French sergeant is disgusted with inactivity and the inability of his unit to make any difference. Knowing that his likely orders will be to stay put, he moves his unit out in advance of those orders. The U.N. soldiers travel in a white armored vehicle and wear silly looking blue helmets and have thus acquired the nickname of “Smurfs.” To get to the trench in no man’s land, the Smurfs must seek the permission of a Serbian officer to pass through their barricade. The Serbs don’t speak French and the French sergeant doesn’t speak a word of the Serbian tongue, so they communicate in what passes for a universal language – English. More precisely, very bad English!

Reaching the trench where Tchiki, Tsera, and Nino are holed up, Marchand reports the situation to Soft and is immediately chastised for getting involved and told in no uncertain terms to return to base. Marchand has little choice but to obey. On the way back, he encounters a team of reporters and cameramen from “Global News Network”, headed by ace-reporter Jane Livingston (Katrin Cartlidge). She wants a scoop and he wants to aid the men in the trench, so they strike a deal. Livingston applies media pressure to Soft, threatening coverage about how the U.N. forces refused to act to save the three men. In return, she’ll get to cover the rescue effort live. The U.N. commander is thus manipulated by the media, but, later, the resourceful though repulsive Soft manipulates the media right back.

That much is the set-up for this film. The rest of the story I feel obliged to leave untold. Suffice it to say, there are several surprises and twists the rest of the way that together comprise a skillful bit of storytelling that viewers deserve to discover for themselves. The ending is highly fitting and serves the film’s message very effectively.

Metaphors and a Thematic Paradox: No Man’s Land is rich with metaphors. The dense fog that opens the film can be readily seen as a metaphor for the pall that had befallen the former Yugoslavia and the clouding of judgment by hatred and thirst for revenge. The conversations between Tchiki and Nino are, of course, a metaphor for the mentality of their respective sides and, more broadly, the mentality that supports war whenever and wherever it occurs. The blinders that cause people to see only the wrongs that have been done to themselves and their ethnic group while obscuring recognition of what they themselves have done to the other side provide the essential underpinning for war. It doesn’t help when national leaders deepen that tendency toward self-deceit by trumpeting false intelligence. Tanovic’s intent, in this film, is not to blame one group of people or another for the conflict, but to blame ideas – fallacious thought processes. His target it the blinders that give rise to cycles of violence, retribution, and more retribution, with each side smugly believing in the righteousness of their own perspective. The ultimate metaphor of this film, however, is the incapacitated man on the landmine – unable to move, on the verge of imminent destruction. He, of course, is Yugoslavia. And if the U.N. forces ultimately turn their back on him, it is symbolic of the world turning its back on the entire conflict in the Balkins.

There are two principal messages in this film and together they from a startling paradox. Tanovic is eloquent in No Man’s Land in revealing the absurdity of war. We discover, for example, that the enemies Tchiki and Nino not only speak the same language but actually knew the same lovely girl in Nino’s hometown. Tchiki had dated her and Nino had been a classmate. Now these men must try to kill one another and the girl in question has gone abroad, presumably wanting nothing further to do with what either of these men represent. Many films, of course, illustrate the absurdity of war. It is a fairly routine message – though one I personally never tire of hearing repeated. The second message of No Man’s Land is more unusual – there is no such thing as neutrality when killing is underway. This introduces a more complex argument. When one engages a situation, rather than maintaining strict neutrality, there is always the risk that such engagement will widen the conflict. One may be drawn into the war rather than defusing it. But war in absurd, so why be drawn in? Doesn’t this film suggest you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t? I personally subscribe to both messages! It is why I view myself as strongly antiwar yet not a pacifist. There are times when refusing to engage evil is itself evil, though there are far more instances when people enter absurd wars supported only by self-deceit, ethnocentricity, or greed. Careful, dispassionate analysis can guide a people safely through this greatest of paradoxes, though it too rarely happens, as recent U.S. history illustrates.

Production Values: There’s lots to like about the way this film presents itself – especially considering that it was its director’s first feature. One nice side benefit of the plot is that is created a natural hiatus in the “action” of war that allowed deeper elements to emerge. We get to listen to the “conversation” of war. We even get time to smell the roses, in a sense. Tanovic and his cinematographer let us see and understand that war takes place in the midst of nature. We see sunrises and blue skies that contrast starkly with the insanity of the human activities. We even get to see nature from the vantage point of Tsera, lying on his back. There’s nothing like imminent death to focus one’s attention on the chirping of a bird or a cloud in the sky.

The performances are all excellent. The military personnel are generally played for realism while the U.N. commander and the reporters are played for satire. But in some respects, the news media are such an inherent cliché in reality that they pretty much satirize themselves anyway. Satire and reality are almost indistinguishable when it comes to the absurdity of media motivations.

Most of the performers will be entirely fresh faces to Western viewers. Many, however, will recognize Simon Callow (Amadeus (1984), A Room with a View (1985), Postcards from the Edge (1990), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and Shakespeare in Love (1998)). A few may even recognize Katrin Cartlidge from Before the Rain (1994) or Career Girls (1997).

Bottom-Line: Where most World War II vintage Hollywood war films glorified war, the post-Vietnam Hollywood movies have reflected the increasing angst and distress of Americans about the horrors and absurdities of war. Films like Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1986) began the trend, which has continued more recently in films like Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Thin Red Line (1998). No Man’s Land is in the vein of such films and fully competitive with the best of them.

This is a taut drama with a tough-nosed message and just enough black humor to render the pill not too bitter. I highly recommend it. No Man’s Land is in multiple languages. English predominates in about a third of the film and the remainder is provided with English subtitles. The running time is just 98 minutes. It is rated R, presumably for violence, since there is no nudity or sexuality.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Belgium:

Farinelli: Il Castrato
Rosetta
Toto the Hero

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age