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No Man’s Land (Danis Tanovic) 2001 Danis Tanovic’s first film, No Man’s Land, could easily have been titled Between Enemy Lines, since it is mostly set amid a battlefield’s
front, and chooses to deem neither side “the good guys”. The film attempts
to establish the same sort of savage political satire that colored films like Dr.
Strangelove, and similarly employs a take no prisoners approach that aims to
eviscerate everyone involved in its central conflict. In the film, both Bosnian
and Serbian soldiers are trapped together in a ditch, within the sniping range
of each other’s firing squads. It’s an excellent premise for a film, which
makes it that much more disappointing that due to excessive glibness and tonal
inconsistencies, the pieces never come together. There’s much talk about the absurdity of war in the film,
but the scenes that actually show combat are dispensed with a cold, gory
precision that is meant to snap us out of the cuteness of the farce, and remind
us that there are lives at stake. The problem with this is that the violent
scenes are never blessed with the same sense of absurdity that drives the rest
of the film, and as a result feel completely disconnected and shamelessly
manipulative. As a result, the film isn’t so much an indictment against
battle, but one against bureaucracy. Tanovic chooses not to call into question
the reasons behind the war, but instead snipes at easy targets such as the head
of the UN, who is painted as a intrusive bumbler that’s only interested in
creating the appearance of trying to help. Much of the film’s humor is
tiresome as well, and resorts to calling up such stock attitudes as “Germans
are efficient” or “the press will do anything to get a story”. In its attempts to call everyone’s bluff, No
Man’s Land doesn’t do enough to acknowledge the reasons its conflict has
arisen. As a film that could provide a uniquely Bosnian perspective on the war,
it disappoints, since it’s attempting, and failing, to achieve a degree of
universality. Its condemnation of the press is ironic, since the film relies on
the same prejudices that the media propagates in order to make us laugh, and
even gives us a recap of the events leading up to the Bosnian/Serb clash
that’s presented as a brief news story (it's a blatant contradiction that
Tanovic decides we can learn from the news here). This is a sound bite satire
for a war fought through them. Though it’s admirable for not blaming one
group, it instead blames the whole system, and even that feels too pat. The
eventual, inevitable heavy-handed ending attempts to damn us, damn us all to
hell for allowing such a situation to be created, but ultimately the only one
responsible for perpetuating the media’s distortion of the war is Tanovic
himself. As a result, No Man’s Land
is a feeble attempt to satirize, since it seems to lack a genuine understanding
of its subject. ** 12-10-01 Jeremy Heilman
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