In The Land Of Blood and Honey
Writer-director Angelina Jolie presents a blunt and brutal look at genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.
Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen. All the director's decisions were taken in the interest of heightened verisimilitude, from working in the Bosnian language (an English-language version is available as well) to using as many authentic locations as possible (some in Bosnia, others in Hungary) and having cinematographer Dean Semler employ a combat-ready style.
The title stems from the fact that, in reference to the Balkans, the Turkish word for honey is “bal” while the word for blood is “kan.”
Angelina Jolie's powerful directorial debut about the Bosnian war – which showed at the Berlin film festival – impresses with its lack of directorial flourishes.
Jolie's intention, clearly, is to present their relationship not only as a hideous distortion of what might have been, warped and corroded by the brutalities of the war, but also as metaphor for the conflict itself: riven by ancient prejudices, self-hate, and double standards, and the application of violence (sexual and otherwise) to sustain the male-Serb hegemony. This, rather weirdly, has the effect of making Danijel the more complex, dramatically interesting character: Ajla is a largely passive victim-figure, penned in a single room, and given only a narrow range of terror and relief, while most of the horrors go on elsewhere. Danijel, of course, is an active participant in them, indulging in an Oedipal conflict with his ultra-nationalist general father, all the while attempting to hide his tender feelings for his prisoner.
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