Portrait of a War
A Research into the Representation of the 1991‐1995 Balkan War
in NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
Laurike in ’t Veld
0100331
[email protected]/+31647842444
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank van Vree
Defense Date: 29 August 2008
Research Master in Mediastudies
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
3
2. Historical Context
2.1 The Events Leading up to the War
2.2 The Serbian/Bosnian Conflict
5
5
9
3. The Films: NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
13
4. NO MAN’S LAND
4.1 Synopsis
4.2 Main Characters
4.3 UNPROFOR
4.4 Media
4.5 War and Genocide
17
17
19
21
22
23
5. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
5.1 Synopsis
5.2 Main Characters
5.3 The Serbian Unit
5.4 Filmic Symbols
5.5 War and Genocide
25
25
27
29
33
37
6. Thematic Analysis
6.1 The Representation of Communism
6.2 The Representation of Society
6.3 The Representation of Politics and the Question of Guilt
6.4 The Representation of the Nature of War and Violence
6.5 The Representation of the Effects of War
39
39
44
53
60
66
7. Conclusion
72
8. Bibliography
75
9. Film Credits
77
Appendix I: Abstract in Dutch
Appendix II: PhD Proposal
78
80
2
1. Introduction
Between 1991 and 1995, several conflicts took place in the Balkan region. After the collapse
of Tito’s Yugoslavia, nationalist groups took power and many regions desired independence
or expansion, causing turmoil, war and ethnic cleansing in several of the ethnically‐mixed
countries like Croatia and Bosnia‐Herzegovina. The wars in the Balkans have been complex,
involving many players and events. Since that time, filmmakers, native and non‐native, have
been representing this war and its related genocide in a variety of films and documentaries,
ranging from tragicomedy to explicit war sceneries and Hollywood adaptations. In this thesis,
I want to take a closer look at two of these films and take them as a starting point into the
question of representing war, the effects of war and its relationship to man, society, history,
psychology, ethics and politics.
Hollywood has undoubtedly had a pivotal role in shaping the collective memory of war,
especially when it comes to filmic representations of both World Wars and the Vietnam War.
Hollywood representations of war are often characterized by elements of spectacle, heroism
and bravery. The dominance of the Hollywood war industry can also be traced in academic
circles. It is very easy to find books or articles dealing with the (war) films produced in the
United States. However, when looking for books or articles that deal with representations of
the recent war in the Balkans1, the situation gets more complicated. There are but a few
works that specifically deal with representations of the war in the Balkans, although the
number of films dealing with the Balkan war and its aftermath is surprisingly high, and new
films are coming out every day. Of course, this can be explained by the fact that the war
ended just recently, so that a solid corpus on films about the conflicts in the Balkans still
needs to be developed. This is exactly where I hope to contribute. My interest lies in films coming from the Balkan region. These films deal with the war on
different levels and they give a detailed image of Balkan cultures and the effects of the war
1
It is important to mention that the term ‘the Balkans’ is controversial, contested mostly by countries from the
region itself. Balkan scholar Maria Todorova explains that the countries of the former Yugoslavia often
emphasize their differences from each other, rather than looking at their similarities, which is why they object
to the umbrella term ‘Balkans’. Balkan cinema scholar Dina Iordanova states that Croatia and Slovenia have
issued several state documents in which they make it clear that they do not want to be referred to as ‘Balkan’.
However, as I will often be talking about the region as a whole, I am making the conscious choice to use the
term ‘the Balkans’ because I do not see any other term fit.
3
on society, people and daily life. By analyzing these films, we can gain insight into a (inter)
national cinema that remains underrepresented in film studies. In addition, when working
on creating a strong corpus related to this subject, we might one day move on to contrast
these findings with other representations of war, looking at their differences and similarities.
In this thesis, I will analyze two films, NO MAN’S LAND (Danis Tanović, 2001) and PRETTY VILLAGE,
PRETTY FLAME (Srdjan Dragojević, 1996), and show how they deal with the Serbian/Bosnian war
in Bosnia‐Herzegovina. How do these films portray the war and its effects? What is the
image given of the people, the traditions, the changing society? What kind of messages are
these films constructing and which means do they use to do so? The overarching research
question that will lead me during this thesis is: How do NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY
FLAME represent the ’91‐’95 war in the Balkans and how can these films be contextualized
with regard to history, Balkan society and their relating film corpora? First, I want to give a concise overview of the historical context and of the specific conflict I
will be dealing with, namely the Bosnian/Serbian conflict. After this, I will elaborate on the
Balkan film corpus and motivate my choice of films. My methodological approach with
regard to the films will consist of conducting a close reading of two films, focusing on
interesting filmic elements such as the main characters and their attributes, filmic symbols,
and the portrayal of war and genocide. After this exploratory analysis, I will take a broader
analytical look at the films, focusing on the main themes in the film and connecting these to
other films and relevant literature. With this second analysis, I hope to give a
comprehensive, detailed and inclusive look at the way these films represent the war and its
effects. I want to emphasize that the aim of this thesis is to make a small step in the larger field of
Balkan films. Films from the Balkan region have, in these past years, received more academic
attention and rightfully so. Balkan films constitute a vibrant and valuable corpus which deals
with a wide array of historical, social and political issues. I hope to show that this is a film
corpus that requires more attention and researching as well as provide a possible way to
approach these films. 4
2. Historical Context
Before turning to the films, I will first need to describe the history of the 1991‐1995 Balkan
war as well as the specificities of the Serbian/Bosnian conflict. This is a necessary step in
order to comprehend the content of these films.
2.1 The Events Leading up to the War
When looking at the history of the Balkan area it is important to note that for centuries it
was part of different empires. Over time, the Balkans were part of the Byzantine kingdom
and reigned by the Ottoman Empire as well as the Habsburg Empire. These influences had an
important consequence that both the Islam and the Christian faith were present in the
Balkans. A large part of Serbia was ruled by the Christian Byzantine Kingdom but lost its
status as a regional power after being taken over by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.
As Branimir Anzulovic describes in his work on Serbia, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to
Genocide, this loss of power was very traumatic and the centuries under Ottoman rule
cultivated myths of earlier and more prosperous times.2 This defeat and the subsequent
myth‐making, especially the 1389 battle with the Ottoman Turks in Kosovo, would play an
important role in various conflicts in the Balkan area, as well as in the 1991‐1995 war. Even
more recently we saw references to this battle and images of Prince Lazar, who fought and
perished in this 1389 battle, during rallies of angry Serbian crowds after Kosovo declared its
independence.
The first Yugoslav state, ‘The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ was formed after WWI
and later reigned by King Alexander I who renamed it Yugoslavia. This kingdom was invaded
by the Axis powers in 1941. These Axis powers split up Yugoslavia and installed Nazi puppet
states in Croatia and Serbia. Concentration camps like Jasenovac were constructed in Croatia
and the fascist Ustase committed many atrocities, targeted mostly at Serbs, Jews and
Romani. However, resistance movements were formed, like the communist Yugoslav
National Liberation Army led by Josip Broz Tito. This partisan movement organized a guerilla
campaign through which they gained increasing support from the population. In 1943, the
2
Anzulovic, Branimir. Heavenly Serbia: from myth to genocide. London: Hurst, 1999: p.2
5
foundation was laid for a post‐war organization of the country: a communist federation
modeled after the Soviet Union.
The Second Yugoslavia, reigned by Tito, was a communist republic consisting of 6 countries:
Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, and two
autonomous regions, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Tito erected a strong national army, the
Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija or the JNA, which would play an important part in the Balkan
wars between 1991 and 1995. His secret police force, the UDBA, was effective in bringing
many Nazi collaborators to trial. Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948 acquired his Yugoslavia a
reasonably good reputation in the Western world. Although Tito’s Yugoslavia was in many
ways united, its people having a common goal and suppressing their nationalist tendencies,
his rule can also easily be characterized as dictatorial. Those not complying with the
republic’s ideas, like nationalists and anti‐communists, were relentlessly pursued by the
secret police. Tito wanted the people to feel communist and Yugoslav.3 During Tito’s rule it
seemed as if the different ethnic groups lived in peaceful coexistence. Especially in the
Bosnian cities, one could find three ethnic groups, Muslims, Serbs and Croats, living side by
side without any problems. Mixed marriages were not uncommon in the larger cities,
although not always approved of, and neighbors of a different religion would show respect
to each other by giving each other presents on their religious celebrations. However, as G.
Duijzings remarks in the official report on the fall of Srebrenica: this respect and tolerance
went hand in hand with a form of ignorance that made the peace a fragile one. Duijzings
states that
Alhoewel steden gemengd waren, was daar binnen de persoonlijke sfeer de culturele en religieuze
verdeeldheid groter dan meestal wordt toegegeven. Vaak was van ‘vermenging’ alleen maar sprake op
het niveau van de stad als geheel: etnische segmentatie bleef voortbestaan doordat de groepen steeds
in bepaalde wijken waren geconcentreerd. Hoewel ‘Het maakte ons niets uit of iemand Serf, Moslim of
Kroaat was; vaak wisten we het niet eens!’ tijdens de oorlog een veelgehoorde uitspraak was, gingen
respect en tolerantie desondanks gepaard met onwetendheid over anderen.4 3
Bootsma, Peter. Srebrenica: het officiële NIOD‐rapport samengevat. Amsterdam: Boom, 2002: p.14
Duijzings, G. Geschiedenis en herinnering in Oost‐Bosnië: de achtergronden van de val van Srebrenica.
Amsterdam: Boom, 2002: p.75
‘Although the cities were ethnically mixed, the religious and cultural division within the personal sphere was
usually larger than admitted to. Mixing only took place on the level of the city as a whole: ethnic segmentation
persisted because certain groups continued to stay concentrated in certain areas of the city. Although, during
the war, one often heard the phrase ‘We didn’t care if someone was a Serb, a Muslim or a Croat; we didn’t
even always know!’, it remains a fact that, nevertheless, respect and tolerance were coupled with ignorance
about others’.
4
6
This division was even more visible in the countryside, where Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian
Muslims lived completely separate lives. The rural areas in Yugoslavia were also
characterized by their slow rate of modernization and a high percentage of illiteracy. The
Communists tried to improve these situations by working on the infrastructure, building
schools and establishing collectives for farmers. However, the difficult conditions caused
many people from the rural areas to search for jobs in the larger cities and abroad. In 1974, a new constitution was designed. It was the aged Tito’s intention, foreseeing that
he would not be around for much longer, to make Yugoslavia more stable by diminishing the
imbalance of power between the different republics.5 This constitution awarded more rights
to the individual republics, giving each of them a central bank and separate police, judicial
and educational system.6 In addition, the Muslim population was recognized as a separate
nation. This was an important decision, as this recognition made the Muslims more aware of
their cultural and religious heritage and tradition. Muslim magazines were founded and
mosques were build in the countryside, to the dismay of the Serbian population living there. Tito died in 1980. His death signaled the end of a united Yugoslavia. The republic lost its
privileged position and American protection. This fueled the tacit separatist and nationalist
feelings of the different countries and ethnic groups. Especially Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia
desired independence. In September 1986, a group of Serbian academics wrote down their
national desires and conspiracy theories in a document, The Memorandum of the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts. Excerpts of this document were published in a Serbian daily,
causing uproar and controversy throughout the country. The document stated that the
existence of the Serbs was threatened because they were the victims of Croat and Slovene
economic and political discrimination. It also argued that the situation of the Serbs in Kosovo
and Croatia was appalling, as they were facing total genocide: ‘the document is dominated
by the idea that Serbs must undertake whatever action is necessary to bring all Serbs into
one state as a defense against further attempts to annihilate them’.7 5
Anzulovic 1999: p.110
Silber, Laura, Allan Little. The Death of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin Books, 1995: p.34
7
Anzulovic 1999: p.116
6
7
Stambolić, the president of Serbia at that time, denounced the document. However, his
good friend Slobodan Milošević, leader of the Serbian Communist Party, remained silent.
Milošević’s role in Serbia’s nationalism became more noticeable when he visited Kosovo in
April 1987. Many Serbs had come to see Milošević, happy that Belgrade paid attention to
their minority position. As they were screaming for his attention, the police used force to
drive the crowd away. Milošević, hearing what had happened, went outside and, after taking
in the situation, proclaimed the now‐famous line: ‘No one should dare to beat you!’8 With
this sentence, Milošević re‐awakened nationalist feelings, and he would continue to do so
with his aggressive campaign for a Greater Serbia.
In 1987, Slovenia’s intellectuals published a similar national program in the journal Nova
Revija, which stated that Slovenia would be better off when no longer a part of Yugoslavia.
The infuriated responses of the JNA, as well as the increasing domination of Milošević in
1988 and 1989, only reinforced these nationalist feelings. The fall of the Berlin wall in
November 1989 and the subsequent disintegration of Communist Europe strengthened
Slovenia’s desire to separate from Communist Yugoslavia. The attitudes of Slovene leaders
were slowly changing, moving away from the idea of a united Yugoslavia. In January 1990, a
Party Congress was held in Belgrade. The Slovene delegation submitted several proposals
concerning human rights, the situation in Kosovo and the role of Yugoslavia in Europe. Every
single one of these proposals failed to get adopted and each defeat was followed by a round
of applause from the other delegates. It became clear to the Slovenes that Serbia and
Montenegro were instructed to obstruct any Slovene proposal. The Slovene delegation then
left the congress, soon followed by the Croat delegation. Slovenia and Croatia subsequently
left the League of Communists, Tito’s ruling party of socialist Yugoslavia. Free elections in
these countries in the spring of 1990 showed their political orientation, as the coalition of
democratic parties won in Slovenia and the nationalist Franjo Tudjman in Croatia. In June
1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent. The dominantly Serbian JNA
followed with attacks on Slovenia, but, as there were very few Serbs to be found there, they
focused on the Serb territories in Croatia. The battle for Vukovar in August 1991 was the
most brutal, and over 2600 Croats were killed.
8
Silber&Little 1995: p.37
8
The European Community was divided with regard to these declarations of independence.
Germany supported the decision made by Slovenia and Croatia and wanted to recognize
them as independent states. France, on the other hand, wanted Yugoslavia to stay united. At
a Yugoslavia conference in September 1991, called for by the European Union, Germany was
very clear about the fact that even if the conference failed, it would persist with regard to
the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. This soloist attitude caused an uproar within the
European Community. However, French president François Mitterand understood that
independence would be inevitable and, not wanting to lose face, joined Germany in its
support. On December 18, 1991, Germany formally acknowledged the existence of Slovenia
and Croatia. The other members of the EC followed in January 1992. By that time, a cease‐
fire was installed in Croatia and Milošević directed his attention to the other ethnically‐
mixed country, Bosnia‐Herzegovina. 2.2 The Serbian/Bosnian Conflict
After the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in January 1992, Alija Izetbegović, the president
of Bosnia‐Herzegovina, decided that the multi‐ethnic Bosnia should also become
independent, as staying in the Serb‐dominated Yugoslavia was no longer an option. The
Bosnian Serbs did not agree with this and their leader, Radovan Karadžić, threatened that an
independent Bosnia would not survive a single day.9 An attack on a Serb wedding party
formed the motive for the Serbs to barricade Sarajevo. At that time, the three main groups
in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, the Muslims, the Serbs and the Croats, had already started their
detachment from each other. Separate political parties along ethnic lines had been formed.
The first free elections in 1990 showed that 90 percent of the population voted along ethnic
lines. Izetbegović wanted a sovereign Bosnia and Karadžić wanted to install ethnically pure
Serbian regions in Bosnia. Laura Silber and Allan Little explain in their work on the Balkan
war, The Death of Yugoslavia, that an important difference between two of the groups could
be found in the fact that they had a different view of their historical experience. [...] the Serbs […] regarded the Ottoman period as an age of occupation. For the Muslims it was an era
which saw the creation and subsequent prosperity of their own particular elite. For decades, these
9
Silber&Little 1995: p.205
9
contradictory perceptions had coexisted, but, by 1990, the rise of Serbian nationalism had turned
history into the purveyor of hatred.10 In 1991, the clash between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims had caused the Serbs to
declare autonomous Serbian regions, the SAO, and in 1992, the Serbs declared the
Republika Srpska. At that point in time, the Bosnian Serbs had left the parliament, forming
one of their own and voting to remain a part of Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav army JNA, which was overwhelmingly staffed with Serbs, joined the Serb
paramilitaries, led by Željko Ražnatović, or better known as Arkan, to capture and ethnically
cleanse the Muslim town of Zvornik in April 1992, days after the European community had
recognized Bosnia‐Herzegovina as an independent state. Shortly afterwards, the JNA seized
control of the Sarajevo airport. In 1992, ‘in a systematic campaign, Serb paramilitary hit‐
squads swept through northern and eastern Bosnia in the spring and summer months and,
municipality by municipality, seized control of the region without, in most places,
encountering real military opposition’.11 These campaigns, concentrated primarily at the
northwestern parts of Bosnia and the Drina valley, included humiliation, terror, and physical
and mental cruelty, directed primarily at the Muslims, but also at the Croat population. Mass
detention camps were set up in Manjača, Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm in which Muslim
and Croat prisoners were held in horrible conditions without food and water, constantly
under the threat of abuse and random beatings. The Serbs were unable to succeed in four
areas: Srebrenica, Žepa, Goražde and Sarajevo. However, this would change during the
course of the war.
Internationally, some attempts were made to stop the war. In May 1992 the UN Security
Council imposed economic and political sanctions on Belgrade in order to stop the fighting in
Bosnia. UN special envoys Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen tried to negotiate a peace deal with
the three leaders, designing a Bosnia that would be divided into ten semi‐autonomous
regions. The Vance‐Owen plan was rejected by the Bosnian Serb assembly, overruling
Milošević who did want to go through with the plan. Throughout the war, different peace
plans were constructed and offered, but each time, one of the parties involved would reject
10
Silber&Little 1995: p.209
Silber&Little 1995: p.244
11
10
it. In 1992, the UN agreed to form a peacekeeping force to protect the civilians, offer
humanitarian aid and maintain the ceasefire in certain areas of Bosnia. In April 1993, partly
because of the actions of UN Force Commander Philippe Morillon, Srebrenica was declared a
safe area, a problematic label as it endangered the neutral position of the UN. The term, that
was extended to other Muslim areas like Goražde, would eventually prove to be false. The
Bosnian Muslims had by then formed their own fighting force, the Seventh Muslim Brigade.
In order to secure lines of communication between the different Muslim areas, the brigade
ethnically cleansed Croatian villages in much of the same fashion as the Serbs and Croatians
had already done.
NATO became increasingly involved in the conflict after Serbian forces bombed the Sarajevo
market square in February 1994. When General Ratko Mladić and his troops did not stop
their attacks on Gorazde, NATO air strikes followed. However, these had little effect.
Mladić’s forces were still intact, and, in addition, he took 150 UN personnel hostage and
started a reprisal artillery barrage at the Muslim town of Tuzla. Again, attempts at a peace
process were rejected. In July 1995, the Serbs started shelling Srebrenica. This was in
response to the Muslim raiding, under the command of Naser Orić, of two Serb villages
alongside the enclave. Srebrenica had by that time become flooded with Muslim refugees,
and the living conditions were horrible. When the shelling started both Muslim soldiers and
UN peacekeepers did not know what to do. Civilians panicked and tried to flee into the
woods. Requests for air‐strikes were first turned down by General Janvier, but finally
approved on July 11th. However, by that time Srebrenica was already abandoned. On July
12th, 1995, General Mladić went to Potočari and demanded the surrender of the Muslim
population, or else, he threatened, they would be slaughtered. The Serb forces then
systematically separated the women and children from the men, taking the men to
abandoned warehouses and strips of land, lining them up and, often after horrible physical
abuse, shooting them. Approximately 8000 men were murdered, making it the largest
massacre in Europe after WWII.
It was not until December 1995 that, after many talks and discussions, a peace agreement
was reached between Milošević, Tudjman and Izetbegović. The Dayton peace agreement
included a division of Bosnia in a Serbian republic which comprised of 49% and a Muslim‐
11
Croat part which comprised of 51%. Bosnia now consists of The Bosnian Serb Republic and
The Muslim‐Croat Federation. However, making the three groups live together, organizing
elections and having the refugees returned to their home still proves to be a difficult task.
12
3. The Films: NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
During my studies in film and media, I have developed a profound interest in the
representation of war in both fiction film and documentary. After researching and writing
about the (im)possibility of the representation of the Holocaust, I felt it was important to
broaden my horizon and focus on a filmic corpus which remained underrepresented in
academic circles. I have always been interested in the choices presented to a filmmaker
when dealing with precarious subjects like war and genocide. In the case of the Balkan
region, filmmakers have (had) to deal with representing complex (ethnic) conflicts, the
painful effects of war on morality and society, and the direct aftermath of the conflicts. I started my research by intensively reading about the conflict and searching for films from
the region. I searched in the broadest manner possible, as I tried to get a hold of any film on
the Balkan conflicts. To my surprise, there were many more films produced than I had
expected. I have found approximately 25 films dealing with the events preceding the war,
the war itself or the aftermath of the war. I assume that there are many more films on the
subject12, or films referring to the war, but often these films are not subtitled or available. In
addition, I want to focus on the films which have the Balkan war as their main subject. The
films have all been made between 1994 and 2007, which is interesting because it means that
the first films were already coming out during the war. The films I have researched are
characterized by a variety of style, genre and content. Many of the films are international co‐
productions, like BEFORE THE RAIN, CABARET BALKAN, VUKOVAR POSTE RESTANTE, WHERE ESKIMOS LIVE, GRBAVICA,
NEBESKA UDICA and RANE, but there are also Hollywood films such as SAVIOR, THE HUNTING PARTY,
BEHIND ENEMY LINES and WELCOME TO SARAJEVO. Amongst the films, we can find several
tragicomedies about the absurdity and chaos of war, such as NO MAN’S LAND, UNDERGROUND,
KARAULA, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, and LA VIE EST UN MIRACLE. However, the majority of the films are war
dramas. A fairly large portion of the films gives a look at the conflict through the eyes of an outsider
like in WARRIORS (British peacekeepers), WELCOME TO SARAJEVO (British reporters), HARRISON’S FLOWERS
12
Balkan cinema scholar Dina Iordanova discerns at least 40 films on the Bosnian war alone. During my time in
Sarajevo, a Bosnian girl told me that almost all Balkan films coming out now are about the war or the effects of
the war, which means that numbers are continually increasing.
13
(American woman), THE HUNTING PARTY (journalists), SAVIOR (American mercenary fighting for
Serbs), BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (several British characters) and BEHIND ENEMY LINES (American soldiers).
Other films deal with the theme of friends or lovers who are torn apart or come to face each
other as enemies like in SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, VUKOVAR POSTE RESTANTE, THE KOLABORATOR and PRETTY
VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. There are also three short films, namely THE KOLABORATOR, STAY AWAKE and
REMOTE CONTROL as well as two television series; WARRIORS and DE ENCLAVE. GRBAVICA, STAY AWAKE and
DE ENCLAVE deal with the aftermath of the war, whereas UNDERGROUND traces Balkan history from
WWII to the Balkan war in the nineties.
Many of these films deal with the Serbian/Bosnian conflict, such as NO MAN’S LAND, LA VIE EST UN
MIRACLE, DE ENCLAVE, SHOT THROUGH THE HEART and SAVIOR. Other films deal with the Serb/Croat
conflict (VUKOVAR POSTE RESTANTE), the (imagined) conflict in Macedonia (BEFORE THE RAIN) and the
Kosovo conflict (STAY AWAKE). Some films, mainly the Hollywood productions, leave the various
groups unspecified and use the war as a setting for a story of heroism and bravery (HARRISON’S
FLOWERS, BEHIND ENEMY LINES). Other films focus on the experience of the war through the eyes of
one group (RANE, NEBESKA UDICA, PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME). The films that have become internationally recognized are, other than the Hollywood films,
NO MAN’S LAND (NICIJA ZEMLJA), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2002, the two films
made by Emir Kusturica, LA VIE EST UN MIRACLE and UNDERGROUND, Theodoro Angelopoulos’ ULYSSES’
GAZE featuring Harvey Keitel and Jasmin Dizdar’s BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, which is set in England, but
deals with the conflict in the Balkans. Films that have received a reasonable amount of
attention and are fairly well‐known, especially in the United States, are Milcho Manchevski’s
BEFORE THE RAIN (PRED DEŽJEM), Goran Paskaljević’s CABARET BALKAN (BURE BARUTA) and Srdjan
Dragojević’s PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME (LEPA SELA LEPO GORE).
After watching a large part of the available fiction films on the Balkan war, I decided to focus
my attention on two, namely NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. One might wonder:
why two and more specifically, why these two? The number of films is related to the fact
that I am restricted in time and space and therefore have to limit myself to a manageable
corpus. One might object and state that dealing with only two films is not going to
contribute interesting and valuable information to the field of Balkan war films, as they
14
might differ in style and content. I admit that the fact that I am not dealing with a larger
corpus means I will not be able to make strong generalizations about Balkan war films. I
would, however, counter this critique by stating that a thorough analysis of two films may
indeed provide us with a wealth of interesting information. Both films deal with war,
genocide, ethics and politics in one form or another and therefore, both films are worth a
detailed look. I want to use my thesis to start mapping the field of Balkan war films and I
want to use a detailed film analytic approach to do so. I would rather restrict myself to a
small corpus, having the opportunity to say something meaningful about two films than
wanting to map the whole field and thereby risking the chance of overlooking many
interesting elements. And, of course, my findings could be a starting point for follow‐up
research of other films on the Balkan conflict, slowly building on a detailed understanding of
the corpus.
Now let’s turn to the films. Although I did not make the conscious decision to deal with one
specific conflict, I found that both of the films I considered to be among the most interesting
are centered on the Bosnian/Serbian conflict. It will be interesting to see how these films
deal with the conflict, and to what extent they are different or similar in the means they use
to represent this conflict. Another similarity between the films can be found in the fact that
both were made by directors coming from the Balkan area. Danis Tanović (NO MAN’S LAND) is a
Bosnian Muslim and Srdjan Dragojević (PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME) is Serbian. This, however,
was a conscious decision, as I am interested in the way directors from the Balkans perceive
and represent the war they lived through. Will there be a bias present in these films? How
do these directors represent the different ethnic groups involved in the conflict? How do
they view the effect of the war on their society and/or other societies? NO MAN’S LAND is a relatively small production and was shot on a budget of 1 million dollar.
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME 13 was also shot on a low budget and in a restricted time. Both films
have become very popular, although NO MAN’S LAND is probably better known internationally
because it won an Oscar in 2002. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME is considered to be a modern
classic of Serbian cinema, drawing around 800.000 people to the theatres in Serbia alone. It
won many awards at film festivals, but it was also heavily criticized, mostly by Bosniaks (the
13
Dina Iordanova and others point out that a better translation would be Pretty Villages Burn Nicely:
Iordanova, Dina. Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and Media. London: BFI Publishing, 2001: p.141
15
term for Bosnian Muslims) and Croats who accused the film of having a pro‐Serb bias.
Dragojević tried to finance his film by approaching various Serb sources. Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadžić seemed sympathetic for a while, but the project was eventually turned
down as ideologue Nikola Koljević thought the script was slanderous to the Serbs. The main
subsidies came from Radio‐TV Serbia and the Serbian Ministry of Culture.14 Dina Iordanova
describes the film as having an ‘all sides are guilty’ approach. This approach was attacked by
critics in Yugoslavia, because ‘how could they [Iordanova also talks about another Serbian
film], belonging to an ethnic group which was perceived as the aggressor, invite all others to
share a guilt that was originally “theirs”?’.15 During the main part of the film PRETTY VILLAGE,
PRETTY FLAME chooses one point of view, the Serbian one, whereas NO MAN’S LAND gives equal
attention to both points of view.
I will analyze the two films by picking out interesting and striking elements. I do not take an
established theory or analytical framework as a starting point. On the contrary, my
methodology consists of a close reading of the two films. I want to be able to address
whatever comes up in these films, without having to fit that into certain predetermined
categories. By not having a concept or theory as a guiding principle, I will be open to
different connections and interpretations, both on a textual, contextual and intertextual
level. Throughout my thesis, I will continue my analysis of the films, constantly connecting
parts of them to theory and other relevant films and documentaries. This next section can
thus be viewed as an exploratory analysis of the two films. 14
Iordanova, 2001: p.143 Iordanova 2001: p.141
15
16
4. NO MAN’S LAND
4.1 Synopsis
NO MAN’S LAND is set near Tuzla in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, somewhere between the frontlines of
the Serbian and the Bosnian army. At night, a group of Bosniak soldiers, intending to switch
place with other soldiers, are forced to stop as the fog is closing in on them. When daylight
breaks, the group moves on but soon discovers that they are too close to the Serbian
frontlines. They get shot at and many of them do not survive. One man, Ciki (Branko Djurić),
runs for the second Serbian trench and is able to get there in one piece. The Serbian army
decides to send two man down to inspect the trench. One of them is Nino (Rene Bitajorac), a
naïve and inexperienced soldier. He is accompanied by an older soldier, who is visibly
unhappy with the task assigned. Nino and the older soldier check out the trench and Ciki
hears them and hides in a shed. When nothing seems wrong, the older soldier decides to
have some fun, and places a bomb under one of the dead Bosniak bodies, which will explode
when someone tries to remove the body. In the meantime, Ciki has been able to retrieve a rifle, something that is eventually noted by
Nino. Ciki comes out of his hiding place, kills the older soldier and wounds Nino. From this
moment on, we are witnessing a constant power struggle between the two men. Ciki
decides not to kill Nino and keeps him as a hostage, stripping him down to his underwear
and letting him parade around in a white t‐shirt so as to signal that they need help. Both
armies see Nino but are unable to decide to which side he belongs: ‘Is he one of us? There’s
nothing on his underpants, I don’t know’. In the trench, the one with the rifle is the one with
the power. At first Ciki holds the rifle, giving Nino orders and forcing him to admit that it was
the Serbs who started the war. Ciki is distracted when the man on the bomb, called Cera
(Filip Sovagović), appears to be alive, and Nino retrieves the rifle, immediately turning the
tables and forcing Ciki to admit that it was the Bosniaks who started the war. After another
skirmish both men have a rifle. In the meantime, Cera has to lie completely still in order to
prevent the bomb from exploding. 17
Ciki and Nino decide to parade around in their shorts and white t‐shirts, which causes both
armies to alert the UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force). The films then shows the
controversial way the UNPROFOR works, constantly showing its unwillingness or inability to
help. Orders from senior officers inform the UN blue‐helmeted soldiers (jokingly called ‘the
Smurfs’ by Nino and Ciki) that they are not allowed to help the men in the trench. Marchand
(George Siatidis), a French soldier who is visibly fed up with his neutral and passive position,
decides to go anyway. When Marchand arrives at the trench, taking in the situation and
contemplating how to help these men, he is heavily reproached by his superior, Captain
Dubois (Serge‐Henri Valcke), and ordered to leave the trench immediately. Marchand then
encounters a BBC journalist, Jane Livingstone (Karin Cartlidge), who helps him by
broadcasting a live report about the trench issue. This forces the UN officials to act, and they
call for a mine expert to defuse the bomb on which Cera is lying. However, even with a solution at hand, Nino and Ciki are unable to stop their quarreling.
Earlier in the film, it seemed as if they had formed a fragile peace in the trench. In an earlier
conversation they had found out that they had some similarities, as they both knew a certain
girl from Banja Luka. But when the UN soldiers are in the trench, Nino awaits a quiet
moment and then attacks Ciki with a knife. The UN soldiers intervene, but it seems like their
feud is revived when later on we see Ciki hide the knife in his shoe. The trench is, at that
point, swamped with press and UN soldiers and officials. The mine expert arrives and Nino
and Ciki are forced to leave the trench. The mine expert then discovers it is impossible to
defuse the bomb on which Cera is lying. Ciki and Nino are standing far apart, both guarded
by UN soldiers. However, when unattended Ciki grabs a gun and shoots at Nino, while the
soldier standing next to Nino shoots back at Ciki. Both men are killed. The UN officials decide
to pretend the bomb has been defused and they fill a stretcher with stones and cover it with
a blanket. The press now thinks the issue is resolved and the whole convoy moves away
from the trench. In the final shot we see Cera, still there in the trench, alone, lying on the
bomb. 18
4.2 Main Characters
There are many interesting elements in this film. The first thing that I want to address is the
way the main characters in this film are represented in terms of attitude, clothing, language
and actions. For instance, there is a noticeable difference between the Serb and the Bosniak
army. The Bosniak army appears to be less organized and less professional than the Serbian
army. Ciki is wearing a Rolling Stones t‐shirt with the well‐known open mouth and tongue,
army pants and All Stars. His overall appearance shows us he is not a thoroughly trained
army professional. His everyday style of clothing leads us to think he is a civilian who fights
without much military and technological training. He does, however, look experienced and
somewhat jaded, marked by his fighting and lack of fear for the Serbian enemy. Nino, on the
other hand, is a rookie, naïve and inexperienced with war and fighting. When he is chosen to
check out the trench he is eager to do the right thing, dressing up in fully‐equipped army
gear. The older Serb looks at him with disdain and then cynically and grumpily takes off
everything Nino has just put on, stating ‘we don’t need this’ with every item. In addition,
Nino is constantly breaking an unwritten rule by introducing himself, holding his hand out
and eagerly waiting for a reply. No one reacts to this introduction, as nobody seems to care
who he is or what his name is. The Serbian troops are visibly more organized. The soldiers
are all in full soldier attire and equipped with more and better weaponry than the Bosnian
army. They are clearly with more soldiers than the Bosnian army and they have a chief
commander who is giving out orders. In the Bosnian army, on the other hand, it appears that
everybody is just going their own way without any form of central power directing the
soldiers. However, although there is a discrepancy in outward professionalism, both armies are
portrayed as clumsy, bored and uninterested. Especially the Serbian soldiers are visibly
annoyed when their superior asks them who wants to go to the Bosnian trench. They are
sitting out the war, hoping nothing disturbing will happen during their shift. The same holds
true for the Bosniak army. The two men watching the trench from a distance are just sitting
around; sleeping and reading the newspaper. A comic remark is made by a Bosniak soldier
who cries out in shock when reading the newspaper. The other soldier asks him what is
going on and the man replies: ‘What a mess in Rwanda!’ This remark demonstrates that the
19
soldiers do not take their own war too seriously. The picture drawn of the two armies is far
from the heroic and tough image of strong and powerful soldiers that we encounter in many
other war films: no constant shooting, no sensational bombings, no heroic soldiers saving
innocent civilians. The war is like an office day‐job, a given situation that consists of a lot of
boredom, waiting and passivity. The un‐heroic and unsensational character of the war is also
reflected in the immediate surroundings. No bombed villages, no rubble and smoke, no grey
and filthy surroundings but serene and pretty natural landscapes: the sun shines and the two
trenches are divided by green grass and flowers. The sound of birds is like a constant
underlying soundtrack. This makes one wonder: Why is there a war anyway? What are these
people waiting for? Comic elements form an important part of the characterization. When Ciki shoots the older
man that accompanies Nino he looks in his wallet, finding a pin‐up picture of a young tanned
muscular boy. Furthermore, when Marchand and the other UN soldiers want to pass a
Serbian roadblock the camera moves to a nearby building. We see a rather large and
uninterested commander lying on a bed, eating, whilst a young boy is playing the accordion.
It is a strange sight; this obese, passive and grumpy man who likes to be entertained by a
little boy. Details like these; the Rwanda referral, the picture and the obese commander add
to the absurdity and tragicomedy of the war.
Tanović makes sure that both the Bosniaks and Serbs are portrayed with equal amounts of
boredom, foolishness, comedy, intelligence and (lack of) agency. For instance, when
Marchand stops at the Serbian roadblock, none of the soldiers speaks English. It leads to a
comic situation where one of the soldiers tells the obese commander to just say ‘yes yes’ to
whatever Marchand asks. This might lead us to think that the Serbs are less educated, or
more ignorant than the Bosniaks. However, when it comes to Nino and Ciki, Nino is the one
talking English, whereas Ciki does not speak any English at all (and doesn’t want to either). It
is subtle characterizations like this that balance out the portrayal of the Bosniaks and the
Serbs.
20
4.3 UNPROFOR
Next to the undoubtedly unglamorous role that is assigned to the Bosniaks and Serbs, there
is also very little credit to be given to the UNPROFOR, neither to its soldiers nor to its higher
commanders. Although Marchand seems to be characterized as a righteous man, he truly
wants to help Ciki and Nino out of their ordeal, there is also a certain degree of ignorance
attached to him. Just like the naïve Nino keeps on introducing himself, the naïve Marchand
keeps on asking, upon encountering either Bosniaks or Serbs: ‘Parlez français?’. Any time he
asks this, the question is answered in the negative, after which Marchand continues asking if
they speak English, which of course seems to be the appropriate question in the first place.
As we go up the ladder of the UN personnel we find Captain Dubois, a stressed and nervous
man who under no circumstances wants to jeopardize the UN mission or its neutrality. When
Marchand decides to go to the trench anyway and
he arrives there, he is immediately reprimanded by
Captain Dubois, who orders him to come back. As a
viewer, you feel a constant frustration. Finally
someone cares about the men in the trench and a
solution seems to be at hand, but the bureaucratic
Figure 1: Colonel Soft
and seemingly indifferent mechanism of the UN makes it impossible to really do something.
Another very caricatured personage is Colonel Soft (Simon Callow), the highest ranking UN
officer in the film. He is sitting comfortably at his desk in a big office space in Zagreb. In front
of him is a chess game and he is accompanied by his female secretary who is wearing a very
short skirt. When Captain Dubois telephones Colonel Soft, informing him about the situation
in the trench and the fact the media has gotten a hold of it, it becomes apparent that
Colonel Soft is extremely reluctant to do anything about the situation. He even proclaims
that ‘the UN doesn’t care about two unknown individuals in no man’s land’. It is not until
there is an increased media pressure that Colonel Soft decides to go to the area in order to
save the face of the UN. Perhaps the most painful and indicting segment of the film, with regard to the UN, takes
place at the end, when Colonel Soft makes it appear as if Cera is saved. He seems content
21
that the issue is resolved without too much hassle or negative attention targeted at the UN.
Colonel Soft even plans a press conference to tell everyone all about the noble actions of the
UN peacekeepers. What is so tragic about this sequence is that it characterizes the UN as a
force that doesn’t really care about the people it is supposed to help and protect, but it does
try to take all the credit and praise. Marchand seems to be the only one who really cares, but
even he remains silent after finding out that Cera has not been removed. The higher up the
rank of the UN, the less they seem to really care about the people out there, fighting and
killing each other. 4.4 Media
Jane Livingston is a reporter for the BBC and she is very eager to tell the story of the three
men in the trench. She is portrayed as a workaholic, always on the move for the latest scoop,
at times mouthing off her cameraman when he is unable to keep up with her quick pace.
Being a professional journalist, she knows how to pick out the most interesting one‐liners
and present them to the public. When she helps Marchand by covering the trench issue, she
asks him about the task of the UN. Marchand replies that one cannot be neutral when it
comes to war, because doing nothing is actually taking a side in the conflict. This heartfelt
outpour is immediately used by Livingstone, who turns it into a catchy phrase for her next
report. It appears that Livingstone wants to do good, cover the smaller and human stories in
the war. However, her straightforward and somewhat aggressive way of working is not
always appreciated. When arriving at the trench, Livingstone tries to interview Nino and Ciki,
who are both not in the mood for her questions. We also see how Livingstone is directed by
the headquarters in England and urged to go and get the story of the man lying on the
bomb. It seems that the media first and foremost want a good and catchy story, not really
genuinely caring for the people involved. In the end she is, with so many others, fooled into
thinking that Cera has been saved and that all has ended well. By that time, a whole battery
of media has arrived at the scene, swarming around the UN officials, all trying to get the
latest news. It is interesting to see how the film moves from three men in a precarious
situation to a circus of UN officials and media, none of whom really seem to care about the
people in the trench, but more concerned with a good story or saving one’s face. 22
4.5 War and genocide
Ciki and Nino have to hide in the shed when the Serbians start to shoot them. The following
heated discussion takes place.
Ciki: If you ever stop.
Nino: You sure do.
Ciki: That’s different, we didn’t start the war.
Nino: Did we?
Ciki: No, the Khmer Rouge..You wanted war!
Nino: Us?
Ciki: No, you’re pacifists.. ‘Great Serbia, all the way to the Pacific Ocean’ That’s how the whole world
thinks.
Nino: Your world! You show us burned down villages and say they’re yours!
Ciki: And that! Are we shooting? Yes, you’re angels, you even temper with the dead!
Nino: That’s different.
Ciki: Yes? Putting mines under bodies, plunder, murder, rape?
Nino: I didn’t see anything of that.
Ciki: I did. I saw my village burn.
Nino: I wasn’t there.
Ciki: I was.
Nino: And our villages are not on fire?! Who are killing our
people?
Ciki: You are! They were shooting at you just now!
[…]
Ciki: Why are you fucking up this beautiful country?
Nino: Us?!
Ciki: Yes.
Nino: Idiot! You wanted separation!
Ciki: Because you started a war!
Nino: You started it!
Ciki: What?! Who started it? (pointing gun at Nino)
Nino:…… we started it….
Figure 2: Nino and Ciki discuss who
started the war
NO MAN’S LAND is not a typical war film. There are very few fighting scenes between the
Bosniaks and the Serbs. Instead, the films shows the effect of the war on the two men in the
trench. Nino and Ciki act out a war within a war. At first, all of the differences and conflicts
between the two ethnic groups are played out in the micro situation of the trench. Nino and
Ciki hate each other and are convinced that the other party has started the war. They accuse
each other of committing horrible crimes and they both feel they are the true victims of this
war. When Nino wants to introduce himself Ciki replies: ‘We don’t have to know each other.
If we see each other again, it’s through the barrel of a gun’. Danis Tanović has made the
conscious decision not to show us any images of genocide. However, there are two verbal
representations of genocide, one is during this conversation when Nino and Ciki talk about
23
burnt and plundered villages. The other one is part of Jane Livingstone’s report, including
real archival footage of the war; burning houses and streets full of rubble. The voice‐over
tells us the Serbs are spreading fear and terror and that they have implemented the words
‘ethnical cleansing’. Why did Tanović make the decision of showing little to no images of genocide? Tanović
might not show these images because he wants to expose the essential problem of the war
without the shock effect of the horrible crimes accompanying it. By giving this simplified
setting, two men stuck in one place, Tanović brings us back to the core issues of the conflict.
No machinery, no explosions, no killings, just two men who seem to have irreconcilable
differences. This small and human situation makes us wonder about the totality of this war:
do these two men really have a reason to hate each other? They look the same, they talk the
same language, they accuse each other of the same crimes; is there really a difference
between these two men? ‘Why should we get to know each other if we will be shooting each
other tomorrow?’ Ciki wonders. Perceiving each other as human beings, as being alike, has
become increasingly difficult for these men.
The film does however give some hope when the two men start to have a fairly normal
conversation and find out they know the same girl from Banja Luka. They have a laugh and
for a moment, they do seem to forget about their problems. However, this is just for a single
moment, because soon after this conversation they are back to being suspicious and hateful.
NO MAN’S LAND does not offer an optimistic view of the conflict. Although there is a glimpse of
what could be, in the end the differences remain. And, amidst the circus of media and UN
officials, Nino and Ciki both die. The press and the UN seem shocked for a minute and then
move on, their minds already focused elsewhere. When looking at this film from a
metaphorical point of view, one could state that Nino and Ciki represent the opposing armed
forces and Cera the civilian population or Balkan/Bosnian society. The civilians are subjected
to all of the atrocities and fights, but they are unable to do anything, forced to wait for
better times. In addition, Cera/Civilians is/are not important to the Bosnian government nor
the UN, they just leave him/them there, helpless and alone. Tanović’ film can thus be seen as
an indictment against war and the effects of war on civilians, as well as the lack of courage
and agency on the side of both national and international politics. 24
5. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
5.1 Synopsis
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME is loosely based on real events and tells the story of two childhood
friends, the Serbian Milan (Dragan Bjelogrlić) and the Muslim Halil (Nikola Pejaković), and
moves back and forth in time to show the effects of the Bosnian war on the lives of those
involved. It is important to note that the film only follows Milan’s war experiences. Halil is
present during other episodes in the film, but remains somewhat absent during wartime,
that is, until the final confrontation between the two men. The film constantly switches
between different layers of time. It moves from childhood scenes between Halil and Milan,
to adolescent scenes where we see them opening up a garage, to the war, an important
sequence in a tunnel and a hospital where Milan is taken care of at the end of the war,
together with other soldiers.
The film starts off in 1971 with the announcement of the opening of the Brotherhood‐Unity
Tunnel. The tunnel and the village are set in Kurtalići, in the south‐east of Bosnia, near the
border with Serbia. A triumphant voice‐over praises this tunnel, which will ‘link all socialist
countries’ and ‘show light at the end’. A representative of Tito cuts the ribbon, but
mistakenly also cuts his own thumb, spraying blood all over the festivities. It is a
foreshadowing of events to come. After this, the film turns to an image of 1980, showing the
same tunnel which is now abandoned and disintegrated. Young Milan and Halil are standing
in front of it, not daring to go in because they fear an ogre might live in there. During various
scenes in the film, young Milan and Halil are enjoying their friendship: peeking at their
schoolteacher having sex with the mailman, playfully fighting with each other and having
fun. The second layer of time is centered around the adolescent Milan and Halil. They are still
close friends and have just opened up a garage. They spend their time joking, quarrelling and
drinking at the local bar. The first sign of change comes when we see a scene accompanied
by the title ‘1992: the first day of the war’. Milan and Halil are having a drink and the owner
of the bar reads the news that a Serbian wedding party has been attacked. Immediately
25
after this, their friend, mailman Nazim (Dragan Zarić), arrives, his car loaded with his
furniture and family. Nazim asks Slobo (Petar Božović), the owner of the bar, to take care of
his house as he is ‘bringing some stuff to his family in Tuzla’. Slobo understands that this is
not just a family visit, but an escape and confronts his friend about it. However, Nazim keeps
insisting that he is just visiting his family.
The next part of the story is set during the war. We see that Milan has joined the Serb
forces. He and his unit are looting and burning villages, and the film shows images of dead
people lying around. When Milan discovers that other Serb soldiers have burned down the
garage he owned with Halil, he opens fire on them, soon after which he finds out that Slobo
has taken Halil’s house. Later on, he learns that his mother has been killed and Slobo tells
him that ‘They said they were Halil’s men’. When the unit is having a rest, they are suddenly
attacked, and Milan guides them to the worn down tunnel where they hide from their
attackers. However, they have trapped themselves in the tunnel as they are surrounded by
Muslim forces and cannot escape. A little while later, a Serbian truck comes barging into the
tunnel, trying to rescue the unit, but it’s spectacular entrance has broken down the truck,
making it impossible to escape. The Serb unit inside the tunnel consists of Milan, his superior
and loyal communist ‘Captain’(Velimir Bata Živojinović), the two close friends Laza (Dragan
Petrović) and ‘Fork’ (Milorad Mandić), the former thief Velja (Nikola Kojo), the ‘Professor’
(Dragan Maksimović), the former junkie ‘Speedy’ (Zoran Cvijanović) and the American
journalist Lisa (Lisa Moncure) who was hiding inside of the truck. They find out that they can communicate with the ‘Turks’ surrounding them via the portable
phone and they are constantly throwing insults at each other. Several times, they clash in
violent shootings, in which some of the members of the unit are shot or killed. However,
even though they are in a precarious and dangerous position, the unit tries to make the best
of it by joking around. During these episodes in the tunnel, flashbacks provide background
information for members of the unit and we see how they have come to join the army and
how their lives were before the war started. A few days pass while they remain stuck in the
tunnel, during which several people die, when Milan manages to make the truck work again.
The Captain barges out of the tunnel, while Milan, the Professor and the heavily wounded
Speedy attack the remaining Muslims. When Milan walks out of the tunnel, he is confronted
26
with Halil. They accuse each other of war crimes; Milan asking why Halil killed his mother
(which he denies) and Halil asking why Milan burned their garage (which he denies). It
remains somewhat vague what happens next, but it seems that Halil, who is standing on top
of the tunnel, is either shot down or lets himself fall off the tunnel, resulting in his death.
The last layer of time is set in an army hospital in Belgrade where Milan, the Professor and
Speedy are recovering. Milan has probably suffered another attack because several parts of
his body are connected to eerie‐looking metal splint constructions, meaning that he has
probably broken both his arms and legs. Speedy is in a really bad state and the Professor is,
like Milan, bandaged and bed‐bound, but still talkative, reading aloud from one of the books
he saved from the fire during their rampages. They see that in the room next to them a
Muslim soldier is being brought in, which instantly
fuels Milan’s feelings of hatred. He is threatening the
Muslim man with meaningful violent gestures and the
man is visibly scared by them. When protesters are
chanting for peace outside of the hospital, Milan is
even more infuriated. A while later, at night, he
Figure 3: Milan and Halil in front of
their garage
struggles to get out of his bed and, pulling himself on
the floor while bringing a fork he stole, he moves to the Muslim, intending to kill him.
Although the Professor tries to stop him, Milan manages to get to the bed where the Muslim
boy urges Milan to kill him. Milan is unable to. ‘You do it’, Milan answers to the Muslim boy.
Milan drops back on the floor, tired, bloody and more dead than alive. In one of the last shots of the film, the tunnel is being re‐opened after the Bosnian war. Now
called the ‘Tunnel of Peace’, the opening is accompanied by a triumphant voice‐over. But
again, the films shows the image of a thumb on the ribbon and the scissor that is going to cut
it, implying that the blood‐shed is far from over.
5.2 Main Characters
Milan and Halil are two friends who do not in any way seem to care about or even notice
their ethnic or religious differences. On the contrary, when they do talk about their
27
differences in the pre‐war parts of the film, it is in a joking manner, like when little Halil tells
Milan he has been circumcised and, in order to prove he is just fine, continues to pee over
the laughing Milan. They are portrayed as close friends who share many childhood
memories; their first peek at sexuality, their male bonding through fights where they
encourage each other to give up and their shared fear of the ogre in the tunnel. In the
adolescent part of the narrative, they play basketball, fool around, drink large quantities of
alcohol and strengthen their bond by opening up a garage together. In the scene that opens
with the ‘first day of the war’, Halil asks Milan, while they’re playing basketball, if there will
be a war. Milan answers in the affirmative, but because they are playing and joking it comes
across as a rather lighthearted reply. They do not consider war to be a realistic option and
they cannot imagine that anything would change. However, when scared Nazim passes by,
fleeing to a Muslim city, Milan seems to be aggravated and smashes his glass on the table
where he and Halil are sitting, causing his hand to bleed. Again, a bleeding hand becomes a
symbol for the bloodshed that will follow.
After this, one loses sight of Halil, not getting any information on how he joined the Muslim
forces and his subsequent wartime experiences. The film follows Milan, who has grown
increasingly hostile towards the Muslim population. He has entered the Serb forces and joins
in on the ethnic cleansing sprees in the Muslim‐populated villages. He has not forgotten
about his past though, because when he finds out Serbs have burned his garage he shoots
them, almost facing a serious reproach from his captain. He is, however, backed up by his
unit companion, Velja, who states that Milan has not done anything wrong by shooting these
guys, as ‘He’s right, you can’t light fires in this heat’. In the tunnel, Milan is surrounded by
other interesting characters to whom I will turn soon. He is part of a group in there, often
operating with a collective character and, at times, displaying heroic qualities like strength,
perseverance, technical abilities and having the ability to keep the morale high. The Milan we encounter in the hospital is consumed by hatred and bitterness, projecting all
of his hateful thoughts on the newly‐arrived Muslim soldier. He seems to have lost any
feelings of compassion or empathy and is completely taken by the loss of his friends and the
ugly side of war. This attitude changes in the last scene in the hospital, when Milan tries to
kill the Muslim with a fork, but is unable to and presumably kills himself (this remains
28
unclear, as the film shows Milan with the fork and in the next shot he is lying on the floor
covered in blood). His last words are ‘the ogre..the bloody ogre’, again a very symbolic
referral to which I will return later on.
5.3 The Serbian Unit
In the tunnel sequence of the film, Milan is joined by other interesting characters who
deserve some attention as well. Each of the characters highlights a specific part of the
Serbian society and gives some insight into the events leading up to the war. I can see how
the sequence in the tunnel is the cause of the majority of the Bosniak and Croatian criticism
on the film.16 Dragojević has used a classic narrative structure; putting a group of seemingly
diverse people in a difficult situation, giving the audience enough time to learn more about
them and how they’ve arrived at that point. The group faces a shared enemy and several
obstructions, forcing a bond between them. You identify
and connect with these people by learning about them
and you want to see them succeed in their desire to
come out of the tunnel alive. The Bosniaks on the other
hand remain, literally, faceless. We only hear their
threatening voices and when they appear in front of the
Figure 4: (Part of) the Serbian unit
tunnel they are unidentifiable figures. They
communicate with the Serbian unit via the portable phone, and they use foul and offensive
language, often with a sadistic undertone in their voices. When they have captured a Serb
soldier, the unit hears his frightened screams while a Muslim soldier remarks ‘here’s the new
singing star, formerly yours Markan, cry baby cry! Don’t worry about Markan, Bakir is a
gentle circumciser’. Both parties are constantly throwing insults at each other, giving each
other epithets like ‘circumcised bastards’, ‘Turks’, ‘Chetties’ and variations on the expression
‘screw your mother a 100 times’ are often thrown in as well. The characters in the unit are eclectic, each of them embodying a specific type of personality
and representing a certain side in the conflict. The Professor is clearly at the wrong place at
16
Although I must say that during my stay in Sarajevo I asked three Bosniaks, on separate occasions, if they’d
seen the film and if they liked it. All of them knew the film and all of them liked it, one girl even told me she
saw the film 5 times because she liked it so much. 29
the wrong time. He seems to be more of a peaceful intellectual, who would rather save a
book from the fire while the rest of the gang is looting houses. He utters a powerful line
when, looking at the burning villages, he wonders: ‘They say the war brings out the best and
the worst in man. What is the best?’. He represents a part of society that is critical of the
war, not understanding its purpose or gains, but unable to resist participation. A little while
into the film, he sadly remarks that ‘We burn a village and don’t even know its name. We’re
killing each other for a handful of ashes’. Fork angrily answers that ‘If it were up to you
academics, there’d be no Serbs left’. When in the hospital, he also remains the more
friendly and pacifist character, trying to prevent Milan from killing the Muslim soldier. The Captain, on the other hand, is a faithful communist and presumably a former JNA officer
who has experienced the glories of Tito’s Yugoslavia and fights for these ideals. One does not
really learn a lot more about him, which leaves him a bit one dimensional, like a shadowy
representative of the past. There is, however, one noteworthy scene centered on the
Captain. When a superior of the Muslim squad introduces himself over the portable phone
as Sergeant Muslimović, the Captain recognizes this man as being one of his mates from the
Yugoslav army.17 They have a short conversation about their developments in the army, but
it becomes clear that the conflict has caused an unbridgeable rift between them; Captain
calls his former comrade a deserter and they open fire at each other. Then there’s Velja, a former thief who is both blunt and aggressive, as well as charming and
funny. He is constantly commenting on their situation, using black humor as a way of relief.
Not only Velja is skilled at making lighthearted remarks but the rest of the unit also knows
how to make fun of the situation. For example, during an attack Fork urges Laza to stay
down as ‘My sister can’t afford mourning clothes’ or when a cow slowly enters the tunnel
and the whole unit tries to guess its name: ‘Daisy?’ ‘Marigold?’ ‘Maybe it’s Turkish!’ ‘Ekrem?’
‘It’s not a bull!’Jaranka?’. However, it is Velja who is predominantly making fun of the
situation, singing songs and making the others laugh. On the other hand, Velja becomes very
serious when discussing Yugoslavia. He gets into a heated discussion with the Captain, who
17
In this scene, the word ‘kum’ is translated as ‘godfather’. However, in the case of Captain and Sergeant
Muslimovic this relationship seems somewhat unlikely. The word ‘kum’ does indeed mean ‘godfather’, but it’s
also used as a term for ‘mate’, or ‘friend’, which seems more appropriate. Close friends Laza and Fork also call
each other ‘kuma’ throughout the film.
30
attacks him on the fact that he’s stealing hard earned money. Velja asks the Captain if he has
earned his money honestly and he attacks the hypocrisy and the two‐faced nature of the
former Yugoslavia and the communists, stating that You people and your honesty. You were always full of that crap. Do you think that one single enemy
house we burn or vice versa was honestly bought? You talk such crap. If they were they wouldn’t be so
easy to burn. As long as Tito stuffed dollars up your arse you did pretty well blathering about
Brotherhood and Unity. Then the time came to settle the bill. Fine. But why didn’t you do it earlier?
You jerked off for 50 years, drove fancy cars and screwed great girls. Now you can’t get it up, let’s deal
with honesty. Well, I shit on that honesty of yours. And on your whole honorable bloody generation.
Screw you. Screw you all you honest bastards. This might seem somewhat of a hypocritical attack, as Velja himself is a pickpocket and a
thief and thus engages in exactly the same behavior of which he is accusing the communists.
However, Velja is very open about his lifestyle and he detests the illusion of honesty and
righteousness that covers all of the corruption and hypocrisy in Tito’s former nation and its
representatives. When seeing one of his flashbacks, we learn that when the army came to
recruit his little brother, Velja pretended to be him, thereby taking his place. This sacrifice
adds to the likability of his character. Velja’s relationship with the American Lisa is
noteworthy too. When she is discovered while hiding in the truck, Velja makes very
derogatory comments about the way she looks. He even hits her and proclaims that foreign
women enjoy a good beating. However, during their time in the tunnel, Velja and Lisa
develop some sort of relation. It becomes clear that the lack of sleep, water and the
constant threat of the Muslims is slowly driving various of the unit members crazy, among
which Fork and Velja. This temporary insanity prompts Velja to walk to the end of the tunnel
while singing a song and he is seriously wounded. After this incident, he decides he is unable
to take it anymore. Before shooting himself, he jokingly asks Lisa for a kiss and receives one.
After this, he sighs ‘real Hollywood..’ and shoots himself in the head.
In the first parts of the tunnel sequence, the American Lisa is presented as a rather
stereotypical representation of a foreign/American woman. Her first remark when they
discover her in the truck is a naïve appeal to her rights, which seems totally irrelevant in the
war situation that she’s in: ‘I’m a citizen of the US, my name is Lisa Linel. I’m a journalist with
the CBC, please don’t shoot me. According to the Geneva convention..’. She is cut off in the
middle of this sentence as they are shot at again and Lisa ducks away screaming. She does
31
not understand anything of what is being said because not many of the men speak English
and she is in a constant state of confusion and naivety, at times leading to hysterical
behavior. The men tie her up, considering her to be a threat to them. Eventually, she joins
the developing bond between the group members. An important event in this group loyalty
is when they all drink Milan’s urine, as they are out of water and dehydrated. One by one,
the disgusted men drink from the bottle, turning their anguish and hardship into
camaraderie and laughter. Lisa refuses, stating that ‘some things you just don’t do’. Speedy
then starts to sing the Coca Cola tune, Velja talks about the excellent homemade bouquet of
the drink and jokes to Lisa that there’s no sugar in it and finally Lisa follows, overcoming her
repulsion. She decides to film them with her camera. Although they oppose this at first,
worried that she will only reinforce existing negative stereotypes about the Serbian nation,
she decides to go through with it anyway. Her representation of the events in the tunnel is
indeed not reinforcing stereotypes but it shows the hard times they endure there. In the
end, when Lisa and the others leave the tunnel, she goes back to pick up her camera and is
killed in the process. Milan takes a look at the camera but then throws it away, erasing the
memory of the time spent in the tunnel. It remains an intriguing question why Milan decides
to do this. Maybe he feels the film doesn’t matter anymore, as almost everyone on it is
killed, or perhaps it is too painful for Milan to keep it.
Speedy is a former heroin junkie who is, as he calls it himself, on ‘war therapy’. His
flashbacks show him in his junkie days, begging his dealer for a shot and pawning his dad’s
watch to get some drugs. He accidentally joins the army when, during the festivities
surrounding the departure of the Serbian army to attack the Croats, he jumps off a bridge
and falls into an army Jeep. He seems to represent those that joined the army not knowing
what they were getting into. Speedy is, at times, overwhelmed by what he experiences and
uses his Walkman to shield himself from the outside world. He is inexperienced and clearly
not capable of dealing with wartime atrocities. His Walkman is very important to him. When
lying in the hospital, in a coma, he desperately holds on to it. It seems to be his only link to a
normal and peaceful world. Speedy is also the only one who is able to speak a little bit of
English and he thus becomes the mediator between Lisa and the rest of the unit.
32
Good friends Laza and Fork are portraying the incited peasant nationalist side of the Serbian
society. They are the strong believers of the media propaganda and mythmaking that
occurred in Milošević’s Serbia in the early nineties. Laza joins the army after seeing a
television broadcast in which an accusing voice states that
History repeats itself again. Evil hordes have risen against the Serbian people. Ustasha criminals and
bloodthirsty mercenaries, fanatics of Allah’s jihad. Swords between their teeth, they are attacking the
poorly armed Serbs, heroically holding their own. They are ready to defend their homeland from
fascist Croatia, a country supported by treacherous world powers determined to draw a new map of
Europe and call it a new world order.
Incited by this message, Laza immediately joins the army by boarding the first truck he
encounters, which ironically has a Turkish driver from Sweden behind the steering wheel.
Laza does not seem to notice this and rambles on about the enemy stating that ‘I said to
myself: never again. They commit genocide on the entire Serbian people and I sit calmly by.
Damn their mercenary souls. Never again. Never again will a German or Turkish soldier set
foot here. They’re evil’. The driver, not understanding Laza, nods his head in response and
gives him a friendly smile. His close friend Fork soon follows Laza. His name is derived from
the fact that he always carries a fork with him, and he explains why in the tunnel sequence,
talking to Lisa’s rolling camera. I recently saw on tv…did you know Serbia is the oldest nation? The Krauts, the English and the
Americans were still eating pork with there hands 600 years ago. But we had this (shows the fork
around his neck). And we gallantly picked with forks. At the Serbian court, we ate with forks. The
Krauts ate with their hands. Bastards. We’re the oldest nation! Unimpressed, the Professor remarks: ‘this fork drove us here into the cave’. 5.4 Filmic Symbols
There are a few clear symbols/metaphors in this film that are worthy of a closer look
because they capture some of the deeper themes of this film. They are the fork, basketball,
bleeding hands, the ogre and flames/fire. The basketball stands for friendship, fun and good times. Milan and Halil play basketball in
their adolescent years, and the game is linked to their playful nature. Further on in the film,
33
when the war has broken out, Serbian soldiers are on their way to burn Milan and Halil’s
garage, sitting on a tractor. They pass by Milan and his mother and ask them if there are any
Muslims left in the village. When they continue on, they start throwing basketballs out of
their tractor. It seems like a strange gesture, but makes sense when we view the basketball
as a representation of the past and the friendship between Milan and Halil. They are
throwing away the past and past friendships, and they are on their way to completely
destroy the last remains of that friendship. The basketball court returns one more time, just
after Milan has found out his mother has been killed, he walks away from his house, passing
the basketball court. It is pouring rain and dark, the camera lingers on the court and shows a
sign of what used to be but what will never be again, especially now that Milan has heard his
mother was allegedly killed by Halil’s men.
The bleeding hands clearly refer to the blood that will flow in future violent conflicts. The
first bleeding hand one encounters is at the opening of the Brotherhood‐Unity tunnel in
1971, when the Tito representative cuts his thumb with the scissors. Another official
bandages the thumb immediately, implying that, for now, the tension, nationalist or
interethnic, might be suppressed or salvaged, but sooner or later the wound will erupt again.
The second bleeding hand appears when Milan and Halil are having a drink at Slobodan’s.
After Nazim drives away with his belongings, Milan smashes his glass on the table, causing
his hand to bleed. Interestingly, there is not much attention given to Milan’s action, nor any
explanation for the reason behind this violent outburst. Halil doesn’t really respond to the
situation and Milan just looks at his hand with a mix of anger and amazement. Again, one
might see Milan’s bleeding hand as a warning of what will follow. Milan and Halil are, at that
point in time, unaware that both of them will have blood on their hands in the future. The
last image of a bloody hand occurs in the last scene of
the film, with the re‐opening of the Tunnel of Peace.
The voice‐over applauds the fact that the tunnel is
reopened so soon after the war, praising the peaceful
and cooperative nature of the people. However, the
thumb and the ribbon instill the belief that real peace
Figure 5: The Tito representative cuts
his thumb
will never be reached, as blood will flow again. It’s also
34
important to realize that the blood is, in all of the aforementioned scenes, always one’s own
and not the blood of the enemy. The fork is a symbol with two sides, as it represents both civilization and barbarism at the
same time. Fork, the character, views the fork as the quintessential symbol of the civility of
the Serbian people. While the Germans, the English and the American were still eating with
their hands, the Serbian nation had forks with which they gallantly picked at their food. Fork
has clearly been inspired by the propagandist statements on television. When he and Laza
look at television program, which is inciting the Serbs to fight against the barbaric Muslims
and Croats, Laza runs away to take the first truck. Fork observes his fork with a look of
realization, as if he just saw the meaning of this utensil, its deeper symbolism. The fact that
he is renamed into Fork signifies the importance of this symbol to him. However, Dragojević
makes sure Fork’s link between the utensil and a higher civilization is weakened by showing
that Milan uses a fork for a completely different purpose. He intends to use the fork to kill
someone, which seems to be closer to the barbaric and amoral side of life. The flames/fire symbol is ambiguous. It becomes clear that the Serbian unit is on a killing
spree (although we rarely actually see them killing someone), burning down Muslim villages
and taking all of the valuable possessions. The title of the film is derived from a line uttered
by Velja, who states that ‘Pretty villages make pretty flames. Ugly ones stay ugly even when
burning’. However, there is, at times, a certain poetic and lighthearted, perhaps even a
comic aspect surrounding the burning of villages. In one of the scenes, the unit is burning
down a village, accompanied by a catchy rock song. Velja is doing a funny dance, with the
burning villages as an impressive décor. However, after some research, I found out that the
lyrics to the song are: ‘They’re dancing to rock and roll in Yugoslavia and everything around
you is bending and straightening’. This gives the scene a certain tension that an outsider, like
me, would not notice at first. The film also shows Velja sitting on a chair playing with a
Gameboy, while a village is burning behind him. A man on fire comes running out of a house
and he is shot soon after. We are, however, not really inclined to feel anything for the
Muslims attacked, as they remain faceless and the atrocities committed by the Serbs are
35
presented in a rather lighthearted manner.18 During another scene, the Professor, lying in the
hospital, reads from a book he saved. His words are accompanied by images of the unit’s
ethnic cleansing spree. He reads:
We noticed it one night, when we were just fooling around. We noticed a village. Our cannon was
glaring as it burnt. Every night at the same time, villages were ablaze on the horizon. We were
surrounded by a huge circle of strange festivities, raging in all those burning places. The flames leapt
up to lick the clouds. A village burning is a nice sight. It looks cheerful. You wouldn’t notice an ugly
hamlet in an ugly valley during the day. But at night, when it burns it looks amazing.
This story has somewhat of a poetic quality, pointing out the aesthetic qualities of a burning
village.19 To an outsider, or perhaps to a Bosniak or Croatian, it might appear as if Dragojević
wanted to portray the war atrocities in the lightest manner possible. In Cinema of Flames,
Dina Iordanova states that Dragojević wanted to find a way to confront the Serbs with their
own wrongdoings. I do believe this is the case, but one needs to be aware of the fact that
these wrongdoings are portrayed in an easily‐accessible way. On the other hand, do we need
explicit dramatic imagery of ethnic cleansing to realize what happened during the war? The
‘light’ elements accompanying the scenes can also reveal the absurdity of the war crimes
committed. These scenes show how Serb soldiers are completely indifferent with regard to
the actions in which they engage, which is terrifying in itself. When young Milan and Halil are standing in front of the abandoned tunnel, one of them
states ‘there’s an ogre asleep inside, if he wakes up, he’ll burn the village’. The other
responds ‘let’s come back better armed. Yes, let’s not wake the ogre now’. They have a
typical childlike fear of a scary and undetermined monster in a scary place. However, it
becomes clear that they are actually turning into the ogre they feared so much. They have
waited to wake it up but 12 years later it has happened and they have now become the
monsters; burning villages and killing others. Milan’s last words on the floor of the hospital
are ‘the ogre..the bloody ogre’. One realizes that he has become the bloody ogre himself. 18
On the other hand, I watched the film with my Bosnian friend Zlata Tanović and she stated that the ethnic
cleansing scene clearly ridicules the Serbs, exposing the absurdity of their actions through the use of the song.
In her opinion, Dragojević is undoubtedly critiquing the role of the Serbs during the war by showing their
indifference with regard to the atrocities they commit.
19
Again, Zlata’s reading changed my perception of the scene. We tried to discern the title of the book the
Professor saves from the fire. Zlata pointed out the fact that Dragojević might be making a connection between
the past and the present: the burning villages of a past (WWII? Yugoslavia?) and the burning villages during the
’92‐’95 conflict. This link between the past and the present only reveals that people haven’t learned from their
mistakes, that they continue looking at burning villages.
36
5.5 War and Genocide
In contrast with NO MAN’S LAND, PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME is filled with scenes of war and
fighting. However, both films are playing out the dynamics of war in a micro situation. The
trench in NO MAN’S LAND and the tunnel in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME are both functioning as
catalysts. The fact that one or both of the fighting parties are trapped in a location gives the
directors the opportunity to closely examine and play out the conflict. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY
FLAME, there is no doubt about the dynamics between the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs;
they hate each other and all they want to do is make sure the enemy doesn’t live. The
process of mutual demonization is aided by the fact that the Bosnian Muslims remain
shadows at the end of the tunnel, almost not human. They also consider each other to be
the aggressor in this war, just as Nino and Ciki did in NO MAN’S LAND. The back‐and‐forth
between Milan and Halil at the end of the film is comparable to the quarrels between Nino
and Ciki. Both sides are accusing each other of war crimes and both sides point the finger to
each other when it comes to the question of guilt. It is clear that the Serbs are engaged in ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt about the fact
that the bodies lying next to the burning houses are killed by the Serb unit, but there is no
explicit portrayal of these crimes. When in the tunnel, the Serbs are shooting many times,
but in this situation one understands their violence as an act of self‐defense. On the other
hand, it is noteworthy to mention two instances of explicit but ambiguous violence. The first
is a rather graphically violent scene where Milan’s mother getting killed. It’s executed in a
rather PSYCHO‐like manner as we only see a hand with a
knife, the screams of the mother and blood. The film
has given us enough reason to doubt Slobo’s
explanation that it was Halil’s men who killed Milan’s
mother and this anonymous killing adds to this idea.
Slobodan is, throughout the film, portrayed as an
unreliable profiteer, someone who takes advantages
of other people’s misery. When Milan advises his
Figure 6: The Serbian unit looks at a
burning village
mother to go to Slobodan, her reaction is clearly showing that she doesn’t trust him. Later,
37
the films shows Slobo looting Halil’s house. When he tells Milan his mother is killed by Halil’s
men one is thus suspicious of his intentions. The other act of violence takes place when the former school teacher of Milan is sent in by
the Bosniaks, visibly beaten up. She stumbles into the tunnel, shocked and maimed, and the
Serbian unit fear the Bosniaks have planted explosions on her. They argue about shooting
her, and find themselves unable to do so. Lisa is scared and screams that they should shoot
the bitch. After some frightened and emotional bickering, Fork shoots the schoolteacher,
after which they find out she wasn’t carrying explosives at all. Both of these killings are not a
explicit, we don’t know who killed Milan’s mother and although the Muslims mistreated the
school teacher, it is the Serbs that shoot her in the end. This ambivalence surrounding the
depiction of violence makes the film more than just a pro‐Serb representation of the war.
38
6. Thematic Analysis
[…] cinematic films evoke a reality more inclusive than the one they actually picture. They point
beyond the physical world to the extent that the shots or combinations of shots from which they are
built carry multiple meanings. Due to the continuous influx of the psychophysical correspondences
thus aroused, they suggest a reality which may fittingly be called “life”. This term as used here denotes
a kind of life which is still intimately connected, as if by an umbilical cord, with the material
phenomena from which its emotional and intellectual contents emerge.20
Films are often connected to and inspired by real life situations and by the events that take
place in the world that we know. Films present us with an interpretation of these events,
constructing a filmic universe in which elements can be highlighted or rejected in order to
create a certain message. In this part of my thesis I want to move on to the next step of my
filmic analysis. I will do this by picking out what I consider to be the most important themes
in the films, moving from the representation of communism to the representation of the
Balkan/Bosnian society, the role of politics and the question of guilt. I will end this analysis
with a detailed look at the representation of war and the effects of war. By using this
method, I hope to provide a framework in which certain aspects of the film: politics, society,
psychology, ethics and war, are joined in a comprehensive manner. By looking at these
different aspects, I aim to provide an insight into the significance of these films, both on a
filmic level as well as on a broader contextual level.
6.1 The Representation of Communism
In this first part of my thematic analysis, I want to take a closer look at the representation of
communism. I will primarily talk about PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, as NO MAN’S LAND’s narrative
follows the classic unities of time, place and action and doesn’t really take a closer look at
the history of the Balkan region. In addition, Nino and Ciki do not specifically refer to the
communist period, nor do any of the other characters. In contrast, PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
addresses the influence and legacy of communism at several points in the film. The film
opens with the line ‘dedicated to the film industry of a country that no longer exists’. After
this, it moves on to the newsreel of the opening of the tunnel. The meaning of this first line,
which clearly points to the film industry of Yugoslavia, remains somewhat ambiguous. It is
20
Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: the redemption of physical reality. New York: Oxford University Press,
1960: p.71
39
not clear if Dragojević truly appreciates the Yugoslav film industry, as it might also have a
cynical undertone, judging by the representation of communism throughout the film.
The first actual scene of the film, the opening of the Brotherhood‐Unity tunnel, gives an
impression of the glamorized and idealized dimension of communism. The opening
ceremony is an ostensive display of the bravura of communism, with Tito featuring as the
mythic and heroic leader of Yugoslavia. His stern and determined appearance on a painting
returns throughout the film, like in the Captain’s short flashback, when he is running with
Tito’s painting to get to his funeral in time. The opening ceremony is lavishly decorated with
young pioneers singing, a band playing and flags with the Yugoslav red star waving. Outward
appearance is important, and the staged quality of the ceremony adds to the idea of
communism as a collective performative play in which people happily engaged, having Tito
as the mythic godfather. People loved Tito and the heartfelt sad response of Nazim and the
schoolteacher when they hear he has died is a good example of this absolute love. They are
sincerely wondering how they will live on without comrade Tito. It also becomes clear that
the influence of communism is carried on to the Balkan society of the nineties. There are
some references to communism throughout the film. The word ‘comrade’ is used every now
and then by members of the unit when they address the Captain. They give the word a
sarcastic undertone, as does Velja when he plays a communist song on his harmonica and
the Captain sighs ‘come on, mock me’. The Bosniaks, in turn, mock the Serbs by playing the
Yugoslav anthem, referring to the ‘good old days’. When the Captain tries to tell a glorious
anecdote about the time he walked 350 kilometers to go to Tito’s funeral the other unit
members laugh at him, making fun of his ‘tough’ story. It becomes clear that communism
has moved from being the only solution for the Balkan people to a mockery, something to
ridicule. On the other hand, Dragojević nuances this critical image by showing how
communism united people in their love for Tito. Although it might have been the love for a
more or less corrupt system, it was the glue that held many people together. The childhood
scenes featuring Milan and Halil portray a lost paradise, a time and place where different
people lived side by side harmoniously. A film that also deals with the legacy of communism, yet in a more lighthearted and comic
way, is Goran Marković’ TITO AND ME (TITO I JA, 1992). In this film, we follow a little boy, Zoran,
40
and his obsessive admiration of Tito. He idolizes him to the point that he imagines that Tito’s
specter appears to him, as a sort of friendly counselor. When Zoran is chosen to participate
in ‘Tito’s March’, a march visiting all the places important to Tito, he is elated, but he soon
finds out that there also is a less enjoyable side to communism. The group is forced to
adhere to a strict regime and Zoran is constantly picked on by the crazy attendant of the
march. This attendant is far from a friendly and caring father figure, and constantly spies and
eavesdrops on the children to make sure they follow the rules and regulations. At the end of
the film, Zoran discovers he doesn’t need communism to be happy, as it’s not Comrade Tito
but his friends who make the difference. This two‐faced nature of communism, the glorification and idolization of its ideology on the
one hand, and the corrupt hypocrisy on the other, also returns in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME.
Dragojević’ emphasis on the cutting of the ribbon and the bloody thumb already exposes the
joyous peace as a fragile one. Velja’s rant at the Captain is the explicit verbalization of this
two‐sidedness. Dragojević is making a political statement by letting Velja directly attack the
hypocrisy of communism. In his interesting article on the film, Peter Brooke states that Gvozden [the Captain’s real name‐LiV] despises him [Velja‐LiV] as a professional thief and eventually
this provokes an angry response to the effect that the whole Yugoslav establishment had been based
on fraud and theft. The villages they had burnt had been based on theft, he says, otherwise they
would not have burnt so easily. Yugoslav prosperity was based on borrowed US dollars. The war was
what happened when debt called in. […] But Velja’s outburst, though it is obviously the self‐serving
apologia of a thief, is different. We feel we should be taking it seriously and it is the most coherent
explanation we get of the link between the opening sequence, the celebration of the Tunnel of
Brotherhood and Unity, and the events of the film. […] With the fall of the Soviet system the West no
longer had any incentive to prop up a Communist state in the Balkans. The subsidies stopped, payment
of debts was demanded, and the whole house of cards collapsed.21 Brooke is thus arguing that Dragojević is making an explicit link between the corruption of
the communist system and the subsequent conflict in the nineties. Communism was based
on theft and corruption and a thin veil of a socialist utopia covered up a problematic system
whereby ‘political rights and duties were by no means equally distributed’ and
[…] membership of the LC [League of Communists‐LiV] and its associated “socio‐political
organizations”, and especially occupancy of position as a functionary, was undoubtedly the key to
21
Brooke, Peter. ‘ Remarks on the Film: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’. Personal Website Peter Brooke.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/pbrooke/bptdg/programmes/0601‐/village/brooke
41
enhanced “life chance” in a number of ways, as well as to enhanced effectiveness in the political
sphere.22 This is what Velja critiques when he accusingly states that ‘Do you think that one single
enemy house we burn or vice versa was honestly bought?’ and ‘As long as Tito stuffed
dollars up your arse you did pretty well blathering about brotherhood and unity’.
One of the last disturbing shots of the film connects to the correlation between communism
and the ‘91‐‘95 war. The camera moves over a pile of dead bodies, featuring the young
communist pioneers, Milan and Halil in their adolescent years and many other people. It
ends at the feet of young Milan and Halil who are observing the dead bodies. With this shot,
Dragojević is accusing both the communist system as well as the nationalist movements that
followed after its breakdown: it is a literal representation of the idea that the war has been
fought over the bodies of the civilians. The people, both in the past and the present, are the
ones paying the price for the malfunctioning political systems. In this way, the film relates to Emir Kusturica’s UNDERGROUND (1995), which also makes a direct
connection between communism and the war. Kusturica’s controversial, complex and
turbulent film deals with the history of the Balkan region, moving from WWII to communism
and the war in the nineties. The film follows three characters throughout these years,
Marko, Blacky and Natalia. During WWII, Marko, a smart and cunning haggler, hides a large
group of people in a cellar. His good friend, Blacky, eventually joins this group of people,
persuaded by Marko that it is safer for Blacky to be underground. By doing this, Marko is
able to win Natalia’s affections, who has been moving back and forth indecisively between
the two friends. After the war has ended, Marko and Natalia keep up the illusion that the
fighting hasn’t stopped, playing soundtracks of bombings and speeches of Hitler. The people
underground, consisting of Marko’s friends and relatives, are manufacturing arms which
Marko then sells on the black market. By that time, communism is installed and Marko has
close ties with Tito and presents himself as a brave communist. In the third part of the film,
we follow the three characters during the most recent war. Blacky and the others are no
longer in the cellar. Blacky has been placed in command of paramilitary troops. Marko is
killed by his angry brother, who spent years in the tunnel and realizes Marko’s deception.
22
Allcock, John B. Explaining Yugoslavia. London: Hurst, 2002: p.303
42
Blacky’s paramilitary troops kill Natalia, after which Blacky recognizes his two former friends
and mourns their deaths. The film ends with an epilogue, in which we see all the characters
living, celebrating a wedding. They are happy and festive, standing on the shore of the
Danube. Then, the part of land where they stand breaks off and floats away, but the
frivolous characters do not seem to notice.
UNDERGROUND is a very rich and imaginative film, full of craziness and absurdities, an explosion
of singing, dancing, drinking, pain, tears and chaos. The mise‐en‐scène and style of the film
are overwhelming in their richness and exuberance. Dina Iordanova argues that Kusturica is
also, like Dragojević, explicitly dealing with the legacy of communism. She states that With the exception of the final, bright image of joyful peace, Underground is a dark film about the
legacy of communism. The very dedication of the film ‐ ‘to our fathers and their children’ (i.e. ‘to
ourselves’) ‐ suggests that the film is addressed to and is best understood by those who lived during
communism and experienced its downfall. Challenging the popular argument about the tribal nature
of the Yugoslav conflict, Underground undertakes to show that the roots of the present‐day war are to
be found in the moral nihilism that prevailed under communism. The film’s setting is comparable to
the state of the Yugoslav people, who for the last fifty years have been kept in the cellar of
communism. Even if they had been above ground, so to speak, they would have been manipulated.
Yugoslavs related with gratitude to leaders like Tito who were eventually internationally compromised,
which is similar to the way the enslaved underground inhabitants look up to their ‘saviour’, Marko. The
hypocritical demagogy of the communist system is accountable for the present state of affairs […]23
Iordanova explains that Kusturica is blaming communism for the conflicts in the nineties. She
quotes him from an interview with David Robinson in which Kusturica states that UNDERGROUND
is A film about manipulation, [about] the way that one or two people can keep large numbers of others
in their power. In Tito’s time people were kept in a kind of metaphorical cellar, isolated and believing
that they were living the best of lives. And in recent years the people who had kept the others in
cellars announced themselves as democrats and promptly created new cellars. (Robinson, 1996,
p.12).24 Iordanova is critical of Kusturica’s statement, as she feels that UNDERGROUND shows that the
lack of moral standards was already present before the rise of communism. She states that
the protagonists as we encounter them in the early 1940s, in the beginning of the film, are
already without morals. Communism may have enhanced their amorality, it did however not
23
Iordanova 2001: p.118
Iordanova 2001: p.118
24
43
create it. I will return to this argument and the use of tunnels/cellars as a setting for the
Balkans later on in this chapter.
Filmmakers like Kusturica, Marković and Dragojević are thus critical of the communist era
and its subsequent legacy. Both Kusturica and Dragojević puncture the mythic and utopic
bubble of communism and draw a direct link between communism and the ethnic conflicts
that followed ten years after Tito’s death. The Captain remains a true follower, even though
he acknowledges the fact that Tito wasn’t the most honest person around: ‘He was a smart
bastard, comrade Tito. He lied a lot but we all loved him’. His dedication to Tito remains,
together with a melancholic longing for the past, a phenomenon which is termed ‘Yugo‐
nostalgia’.25 6.2 The Representation of Society
What is the image given of the Balkan/Bosnian society? 26 Again, NO MAN’S LAND takes place on
a single day during the war, and does not, therefore, give a very inclusive picture of the
Balkan society. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME does go back in time, and offers us a glimpse of the
pre‐war Balkan society. However, this does not mean that there are no clues to be found in
NO MAN’S LAND. Nino and Ciki’s interaction shows the constant oscillation between the past
and the present, between a society where they could have been friends and a tense
situation where they (are obliged to) hate each other. Nino’s attempts at some form of
friendliness or normalcy are constantly ignored by the people surrounding him. He is
desperately holding on to what he knows from the time before the war, which is: when you
meet people you introduce yourself. He does this three times, once with the older soldier he
accompanies to the trench and once with Ciki and Marchand. Nobody ever returns the
handshake. Nino has visibly not yet adjusted himself to the wartime mechanism, and his
25
Even now, when walking through the streets of Sarajevo, you can encounter several stands with Tito
souvenirs: calendars, books and posters. My friend Zlata Tanović explained to me that the Tito cult has been
revived again. For a long time, it was not done to sell anything with Tito’s image on it. Now, after the war,
nostalgia for the former Yugoslavia and Tito has resurfaced. People loved to love Tito, and they still do. 26
I hesitate when saying ‘Balkan society’ because I don’t want to make it seem as if all countries in the Balkan
region share the same type of society. On the other hand, I strongly believe that certain characteristics of the
pre‐war society and the society in war are the same in different countries from the region. On the one hand,
these films are addressing specific elements from the Bosnian society but on the other, both directors are also
aiming at the representation of universal values and effects. Therefore, I will continue to use the two terms.
44
behavior is both laughable and painful at the same time. We could easily view Nino as naïve
and inexperienced, but we could also label his behavior as a courageous attempt to defy the
hatred and animosity around him. Ciki, on the other hand, has cut off most of his
connections to the past, but is forced to reconsider them when he meets Nino. The other
soldiers surrounding the two men in the trench do not seem extremely hateful or aggressive.
They are fighting because war is going on, not because they feel an unbridled hatred for the
enemy. Tanović thus represents the Balkan/Bosnian society as being pulled into a war that is
fought rather reluctantly, which strengthens the idea that the war was orchestrated by
higher‐hand forces as opposed to the idea that it started spontaneously on the streets or in
the rural villages.
And indeed, the moments of peace and complaisance between Nino and Ciki painfully
expose the fact that they are so much alike. This is reinforced by the fact that neither of the
parties recognizes Nino or Ciki as being one of them. And the same holds for us, the viewer.
If it wasn’t for the flags on the jackets and the titles ‘Serbian frontline’ and ‘Bosnian
frontline’, we would spend a long time guessing who belongs to which side. And this is what
Tanović constantly emphasizes: this does not matter. Both Nino and Ciki are caught up in a
messy war. Nino is not identifiably a Serb and Ciki not a Bosniak. The question Tanović poses
is: what would constitute a Serb or a Bosniak? There
are no clear physical signs, nor are there inherent
characteristics belonging to any of the different
ethnic groups. A twist of fate could make Nino the
Bosniak and Ciki the Serb. In addition, they are both
equally guilty and innocent. They both aid in
perpetuating the conflict and they are both just a
Figure 7: Nino and Ciki share a friendly
moment
pawn in a larger play of forces. If we take the trench as a representative of the Balkan/Bosnian society, speaking in
metaphorical terms, we can make a link between the explosive situation in the trench and
the explosive situation in the Bosnian society. This explosiveness works on different levels.
Nino and Ciki are in a constant state of vigilance. Their hostile interaction is based on (false)
presumptions and prejudices. They are both sure the other will kill if he has the chance. The
45
constant cycle of violent retaliations, this ‘preventive aggressiveness’27, is clearly exposed
when we look at the dynamics between Nino and Ciki. We see how, in the beginning of the
film, they are both reluctant to actually kill each other, but when the pressure of the
precarious situation increases so do the hatred and the suspicion, which in the end leads to
an outburst of violence.
This process of polarization between people is exactly what happened in the Balkans during
the nineties. Nationalist movements carefully constructed an us vs. them mentality,
demonizing other ethnic groups. Many scholars deal with this process of cutting former ties.
R. Brian Ferguson describes how, in war, existing social ties are cut or deemphasized and the
other’s actions are always seen in a negative light.28 Philip Quincy Wright emphasizes the fact
that the enemy is identified as the source of all grievances as well as unacceptably hostile to
important values and ideals.29 Dina Iordanova also describes this violent parting between
people, specifically referring to the situation in the Balkans. She states that
No matter how unwillingly, everybody was requested to undergo this imposed re‐identification – from
the inclusive concept of ‘Yugoslav’ which had been cultivated for decades but was now abandoned
overnight, people had to switch to a restrictive concept of belonging, confined to a clear‐cut ethnic
identity. Making the choice and taking a side was treated as a matter of life and death.30 The effect of taking sides and the subsequent cutting of former ties is painfully documented
in Lidija Zelović’ documentary MY FRIENDS (2007), in which she tells the story of herself and her
best friends from Sarajevo and the effect of the war on their friendship. Zelović, now living in
Holland, goes back to visit her friends in various places. Her voice‐over tells us about glorious
Yugoslavia, the land of milk and honey, where all of the children were proud pioneers. She
explains it was great to really believe in something. Now, after the war, it becomes clear that
things will never be the same. Two of her friends, the Serbian Olja and the Bosniak Emina, do
not want to speak to each other anymore. Emina’s mother was killed by Serbs and Emina
can’t talk to Olja without seeing her Serb roots and thus connecting it to the death of her
own mother. Olja, on the other hand, also doesn’t want to speak to Emina anymore. She has
27
Iordanova 2001: p.169
Brian Ferguson, R. ‘The General Consequences of War: an Amazonian Perspective’ in: Reyna, S.P., R.E. Downs.
Studying War: Anthropological Perspectives. Langhorne: Gordon and Breach, 1994: p.98
29
Quincy Wright, Philip. A Study of War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965: p.1095
30
Iordanova 2001: p.136
28
46
grown bitter and talks about the fact that everybody looks at the Serbs as Chetniks and that
she feels guilty for things she hasn’t even done. Zelović struggles with the rift between the
two former friends. Her documentary shows that the war has pushed people to opposing
sides, creating prejudices and misconceptions. It proves to be very difficult to overcome
these tense divisions. Going back to the trench as a representation of the Balkan society, Cera is highly explosive
himself too, lying on a mine that might go off at the slightest movement. Cera represents the
helpless civilians, who were, both literally and figuratively speaking, paralyzed by the
constant possibility of explosive violence. His inability to do anything about his situation is
painful, as he is forced to depend on outside help. In the end, he is left alone, and the
majority of the characters in the film does not even know he is not saved. Civilians in war
were also depending on outside help and they too became the victims of the ongoing
conflict, often disregarded and left alone. This is more explicitly formulated by Tanović in the
television report which cynically talks about the mere ‘120 grams of humanitarian help per
day’.
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME gives us more clues with regard to the character of the Bosnian
society before the conflicts. Milan and Halil are portrayed as close friends. The scenes with
young Milan and Halil are nostalgic, as they portray the two friends as indissolubly
connected, friends for life. In their adolescent years, we see how the two men and their
families interact in a warm and amiable manner. Teasing and joking are an important part of
their friendship and of Bosnian society. Their garage is the ultimate symbol of peaceful
relations between people with a different ethnic background. They joke about the crooked
sign and raise their glasses to a successful future. Differences between the two men are the
subject of jokes and laughs, like when Halil is circumcised and urinates over Milan or when
Milan and Halil are quarreling and Halil runs after Milan, exclaiming ‘You’ll see how a Muslim
skins a goat!’. Dragojević also uses visual markers to show the difference between the pre‐war society and
the society in war. The garage is one of them, and so are the basketball court, a large tree
and Halil’s house. First connected to a peaceful society, Dragojević makes sure these
47
markers return in the war‐sequences, like when the garage is burned by Serbian soldiers, or
Milan hears his mother has been killed and walks along the basketball court. Again, the
friction between the past and the present is what makes these films intensely painful to
watch. Both Tanović and Dragojević show us a glimpse of a society that is destroyed by war.
This lingering memory of what once was and perhaps once could be exposes the absurdity of
the fighting and the violence. During my stay in Sarajevo, I was struck by the calm and
relaxed atmosphere in the city. Although the buildings attested to a destructive war, I felt
the general vibe to be positive, very much like the pre‐war city I had read about, the
harmonious junction of three religions. However, when talking about this with my friend
Zlata, she revealed that although my observation was right, there still is a lot of tension
beneath the surface. People were killed, and those who committed war crimes could still be
walking around town, causing tensions to rise. The returning question, ‘What were you
doing during the war?’, remains on people’s mind when they meet others. Sarajevo is
divided into two parts, the Serbian areas and the Bosniak‐Croatian sectors, and these are
two very different worlds that were separated even more during the war. The characters in the tunnel give us an insight into the‘[…] whole range of contradictory
sentiments inhabiting the Serb psyche’31, although in a somewhat caricatured way. Each of
the characters represents a certain part of Serbian society and Dragojević makes sure that
we establish a connection with all of them. The loyal communist Captain, the former junkie
Speedy, the charming crook Velja, the blunt peasants Fork and Laza and the intellectual
Professor, all of them give an image of the different types of Serbian people. Dragojević
clearly wants to counter the one‐sided perspective of the Serbian people as the evil
aggressor which has circulated in the international media. Dragojević’ aim with this film is
thus twofold, on the one hand he wants to ‘[…] find a way to make Serbs confront their own
wrongdoings, a much‐needed act that is likely to have a therapeutic effect on the tormented
souls of his compatriots’32 and on the other hand, he offers the rest of the world a rare
multicolored image of the Serbs, including all of their different aspects and emotions. 31
Iordanova 2001: p.145
Iordanova 2001: p.143
32
48
The polarization of enemies that occurred in NO MAN’S LAND can also be traced in PRETTY VILLAGE,
PRETTY FLAME. Milan and Halil are able to hate each other because they believe the other one
has caused them harm. Milan has heard that Halil killed his mother and Halil believes Milan
burnt their garage. Dragojević shows this process of demonization even more explicitly with
Laza and Fork. The television program they are watching and the subsequent meeting
between Laza and a Muslim truck driver is a vivid example of what Arjun Appadurai calls
‘treachery’. Iordanova quotes him in her Cinema of Flames with regard to the idea of the
‘intimate closeness of the enemy’. Indeed, friendly neighbors who lived side by side
peacefully suddenly turned into bitter enemies. Appadurai emphasizes the importance of
imagination in the outbursts of ethnic violence. Iordanova explains that
[…] much of the national and group politics in the contemporary world has to do not with the
mechanics of primordial sentiment, but with what he calls ‘the work of imagination’. In the new ethnic
wars it comes down to rifts in the interpersonal relationships of a small community and the
projections of a mass‐mediated identity which, once superimposed on small‐scale ones, put individual
imagination to work in the creation of an exaggerated and demonic sense of threat, even where no
such danger exists.33
Appadurai then introduces the concept of treachery, a feeling of profound betrayal triggered
by a distortion between face‐to‐face relations and constructed large‐scale identities. This
distortion and feeling of betrayal often leads to conspiracy theories about the opposing side
and might indeed cause people to resort to violence, as they fear the opposing side might
attack first. This is exactly what we see happening with Laza and Fork. The television
program they watch constructs the enemy as fanatic fundamentalists, with swords between
their teeth, ready to attack at any moment. The distortion between this imposed identity
and the reality of the truck driver is made clear by Laza’s ignorance of the fact that the truck
driver is a Muslim.
Both films thus represent the Balkan/Bosnian society as one that is caught up between two
competing forces. On the one hand, the films present us with a society at war, where
warring parties are consumed by hatred and aggression. This is a (self‐)destructive society in
which nobody survives. On the other hand, both Dragojević and Tanović make sure we also
see (hints of) another society, one wherein people live together rather peacefully, without
interethnic tension and with the emphasis on what is shared, not on what is different. I
33
Iordanova 2001: p.156
49
strongly believe that both films succeed in exposing and addressing the problems of the
Balkan conflict and its effect on the Bosnian society. Tanović and Dragojević are, like many
other directors from the region, dealing with important issues like war, social reality and the
hardships of everyday life in the Balkans in a critical way. They do not present us with a
glamorized version of the war or of the Balkan society. Instead, they portray the difficulties
and problems of a grim reality. This does not seem to fit in with one of Dina Iordanova’s arguments. She describes many of
the films coming from the Balkan area, especially those featuring a travelogue type
narrative, as positioning the Balkans as the object of an outsider’s gaze. These films are
engaging in self‐exoticism, internalizing the Western view of the barbaric, tribal, flamboyant
and amoral Balkans. It is not just the ‘West’ which constructs the Balkans as compliant to Western stereotypes, to a large
extent this construction is taken up and carried further by the ‘Rest’, and in our case by Balkan writers
and film‐makers themselves. The result is a specific voluntary ‘self‐exoticism’, which becomes the
preferred mode of self‐representation for many Balkan film‐makers.34 Iordanova even claims that filmmakers from the Balkans are prepared to mirror
stereotypical representations constructed by the West in order to gain re‐entry into Europe.
They present the Balkan society as amoral and flamboyant, full of craziness and absurdities.
Films that fit this description are, according to Iordanova, Milcho Manchevski’s BEFORE THE RAIN
(1994), Theo Angelopoulos’ ULYSSES’ GAZE (1995) and Kusturica’s films, especially UNDERGROUND
(although this does not feature a travelogue narrative). Iordanova’s problem with this self‐exoticism is that films that aim to address the troubles of
the region are instead producing traditional stereotypes. Balkan characters are ‘[…]
represented as flamboyant and excitingly dismissive of the restrictive norms of Western
civilization; their lives before and after their contact with the Western protagonist are
irrelevant and are better left out’.35 Iordanova feels that ‘[…] Balkan film remains uncritical
and fails to recognize the controversial effects of the Eurocentric construct’.36 Iordanova also
addresses and critiques the amoral image given of Balkan people by director Emir Kusturica
34
Iordanova 2001: p.56
Iordanova 2001: p.60
36
Iordanova 2001: p.56
35
50
in his film UNDERGROUND. Kusturica exposes the lack of morals under communism and draws a
direct link to the conflict in the nineties. However, Iordanova argues that Kusturica’s self‐
exoticism leads to films where his characters are already people with no morals. She states
that ‘the poor light underground dims any clear ethical standards. Tunnels appear to be the
only adequate setting for the Balkans, both today and for all times’.37 UNDERGROUND’s setting (which is indeed in a tunnel/cellar‐like environment underground) is,
according to Kusturica, comparable to the state of the Yugoslav people under communism:
kept in the dark and manipulated by amoral thugs. However, Iordanova counters this idea by
claiming that the characters were already amoral before the rise of communism and she
connects this innate amorality to the dark tunnel setting, accusing Kusturica of maintaining
the idea of a primordial Balkan man. Iordanova thus hints at a misrepresentation of the
Balkans which is reinforced by the tunnel‐setting. However, let me shed another light on the tunnel setting by looking at one of the all‐time
war classics. In Andrzej Wajda’s 1957 KANAL, which largely takes place in the sewers of
Warsaw, Polish resistance fighters in WWII have to make their way through the dark and
claustrophobic sewage system to reach the safe side of town. However, they do not succeed
and none of them is able to reach freedom. Two of them see light and believe they have
finally found an exit. However, the exit is barred and they are not able to go out, leaving
them and us with the horrific realization that they are so close to a freedom they will never
attain. Other members of the group also believe they are climbing up to an exit, but they
walk right into the hands of the Germans. When looking at the role of the tunnel in these
three films, KANAL, UNDERGROUND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, its metaphoric function becomes
clear. The tunnel represents a form of entrapment, of being trapped in a place that is
unknown, dark and (self‐) destructive, but not necessarily amoral. On the contrary, the
tunnel strengthens certain moral bonds and also leads to heroic actions, like the strong
female role of Stokrotka in KANAL, who carries a soldier through the sewers. The moral code
amongst the soldiers in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME is also very important. They are united in
their animosity towards the Bosniaks and they defend each other when it comes to actual
fighting. However, the moral bonds between the characters in these three films do not aid
37
Iordanova 2001: p.119
51
them in the end. The tunnel represents a society which is trapped in a cycle of (self‐)
destruction, unable to turn the tables and reach the light. The people in the tunnel become
the victims of large‐scale developments, they are the pawns in a larger play of forces. The tunnel is not the only space that is representative of this entrapment. Both the trench in
NO MAN’S LAND as well as the hospital in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME are also symbolic of the state
of the Bosnian society and the nature of the war. The trench is, like the tunnel, an unknown
place in which Nino and Ciki are trapped. They find themselves in a highly explosive
situation, both literally and figuratively, and they are unable to break out of the destructive
cycle of war. In addition, they also become victims of the ignorance and unwillingness of
those surrounding them. The same holds for the hospital in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. Milan,
the Professor and Speedy find themselves stuck in a place where everybody is slowly going
mad. There is a patient in the hospital who has clearly lost his sanity. He is constantly
observing Milan and the others, nose pressed against the glass, while singing and babbling
about Balkan history: the Bulgarian attack in 1913, the Krauts and WWII. He is
representative of a society which is caught up by its own history. A young girl walks into
Milan’s room and calls him a loony. Peace protesters gather outside the hospital and
demonstrate against the war. The nurses and doctors are, like the UN and the media in NO
MAN’S LAND, more occupied with each other than with their patients. The soldiers have thus
become the outcasts of society. Milan and the Muslim boy are, like Nino and Ciki, caught in
one space. They might seem very different, but the film makes us realize that they are, in so
many ways, very much alike.38 38
In the context of space as a form of literal and metaphorical entrapment, a symbol of Balkan societies, I
would like to point out the impressive 2006 documentary VERGETEN DWAZEN (FORGOTTEN FOOLS) by Frans van Eckel.
This documentary centers around a group of Bosnian psychiatric patients who were transferred to a refugee
shelter in Hungary during the war and have not returned since. The patients desperately want to go back to
their homeland, but bureaucracy and unwillingness to help on the part of the Bosnian government make it
impossible to transfer these people back to Bosnia. In addition, their family members in Bosnia are not too
enthusiastic about their return, as they fear they can’t pay for the necessary medicines. The images are painful:
a group that’s stuck in no man’s land for 15 years with no resolution in sight. Like in the hospital in PRETTY
VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, these people are alone, trapped, and far away from familiar things. ‘I’m nobody anymore’,
one of the patients states. It becomes clear that some of them were not mentally disabled and that they joined
the group to get away from war‐torn Bosnia. However, the effects of the time spend in the refugee shelter
make it difficult to discern who is mentally disabled and who isn’t. The group has slowly lost every connection
to reality. They are, like Nino, Ciki and Milan, trapped in a self‐destructive place with no resolution or positive
outcome.
52
Iordanova thus takes a critical look at the representation of Balkan societies in fiction films
from the region and the amoral image given of its people. Andrew Horton, on the other
hand, has a more positive take on the representative side of the Balkan films. He underlines
the performative dimension of these exuberant exotic images. In his article ‘Laughter Dark &
Joyous in Recent Films from the Former Yugoslavia’, Horton describes the performative
nature of the ‘glorious pessimism’ one can trace throughout Balkan films: ‘a common refrain
has been, “Yes. We are excessive and self‐indulgent and abusive of women, but, after all, we
are the Balkans. That’s the way we are”’.39 The trend among new popular filmmakers from
the Balkans like Emir Kusturica and Goran Paskaljević (POWDER KEG/CABARET BALKAN, 1998)
consists of ‘[…] their ability to mix social satire, embracing or bordering on surrealism, with
playfully imaginative tales of individuals attempting to find personal happiness against all
odds’.40 Horton thus positively recognizes a performative self‐reflexiveness in the exoticism
of the Balkan films. More importantly, Horton points out the fact that this performative
exaggeration, this tongue‐in‐cheek reinforcement of existing stereotypes, is a conscious
filmic strategy, something Iordanova fails to realize when criticizing the amorality of certain
Balkan films. With regard to NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, they do not use the
filmic strategy of self‐reflexive exotic exuberance that Horton discusses, but they do include
elements of social satire. It is, however, important to realize that the filmic strategy
discussed by Horton is an essential component of Balkan cinema and it should thus not be
dismissed as an internalization of the Western stereotypical view of the Balkans.
6.3 The Representation of Politics and the Question of Guilt
There are a couple of things to be noted when looking at the representation of the question
of guilt and its relation to politics. First of all, both films use an ‘all sides are guilty
approach’.41 This approach produces a narrative in which all sides share the responsibility for
the violence and chaos accompanying the Balkan wars. And indeed, both NO MAN’S LAND and
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME do not make a definite choice as to who can be marked as the main
culprit in the conflict, that is, when talking about the soldiers on the battlefield. It is
39
Horton, Andrew. ‘Laughter Dark &Joyous in Recent Films from the Former Yugoslavia’. Film Quarterly, Vol.56,
No.1 (Autum 2002), pp.23‐28: p.27
40
Horton, 2002: p.24
41
Iordanova 2001: p.141
53
important to make a distinction between the main characters on the one hand, those who
fight the war, and on the other hand, the (anonymous) larger political forces that
orchestrate the war. Dragojević and Tanović do indeed point fingers, but not primarily at
their main characters. Both Nino and Ciki sustain the cycle of violence and retaliation. The
heated discussion between the two about who started the war illustrates the idea that there
is no solution to the question of guilt. Both men have seen their villages burning, both men
have seen the horrors committed by the opposing side and, therefore, both men are
justified in believing that other party is guilty. We, the viewers, cannot make a choice
because we understand that both Nino and Ciki are simultaneously the perpetrators and the
victims of this war. The members of the unit in PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME commit war crimes, but so do the
faceless Muslim soldiers who surround the tunnel. Dragojević makes sure that the two
groups are represented as equally violent and equally guilty with regard to wartime
atrocities. The Serb unit burns down villages, while the Bosniaks severely abuse the
schoolteacher. The Serbs kill many, the Bosniaks kill Fork and Laza. However, there is a
distinct difference between NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. In the former, both
sides are individualized, Serbs and Bosniaks attain a face and some background, and
sympathy is created for both. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, we only get an insight into the
Serbian side of the story. The films moves from the Bosniak personification of Halil, to a
group of unspecified shadows appearing at the end of the tunnel. Dragojević takes his time
to create a link between the viewers and the members of the unit. We come to care for the
different colorful characters. One needs to realize that Dragojević was probably aiming at
something different than Tanović. Tanović wants to address all sides of the conflict, both
nationally and internationally, and reveal the complexities inherent to any war. Dragojević
has made the choice to focus the main part of his film on the Serb side, as a way of
confronting the Serbs with their side of the war as well as a way of creating sympathy. As
Peter Brooke states in his article on the film.
The film achieves a quite remarkable trick of enabling or compelling us to sympathize with people who
hate Muslims without obliging us, ourselves, to hate Muslims. The Muslims are not the bad guys.
54
When Milan attempts to murder the Muslim in the hospital we don’t lose our sympathy for him but
we certainly hope he won’t succeed and we feel desperately sympathetic towards the Muslim.42 I agree with Brooke on this, Dragojević does indeed manage to focus his attention on the
Serb unit without painting an unfavorable picture of the Muslim side. The fact that he
includes Halil in the first part of the film and at the end adds to the idea that nobody is
untouched by the war. Their final confrontation shows that Milan and Halil remain on an
equal level: both have committed war crimes and both have been pulled into a cycle of
hatred and violence. In addition, the scared Muslim soldier in the hospital could not be
further from a demonic representation of the Bosniak side. On the contrary, it is Milan who
has become the demon, the ogre, the shadowy monster that lurks in the dark, waiting to
attack.
Other films that do not take a definite stand with regard to the question of guilt are SAVIOR
(1998), in which both the Serb and Bosniak soldiers commit war crimes, VUKOVAR: POSTE RESTANTE
(1994), in which an ethnically‐mixed couple is torn apart through war, and SHOT THROUGH THE
HEART (1998), which deals with two friends from different ethnic backgrounds who are, like
Milan and Halil, separated by war. Iordanova describes how these films, especially those
made by Serbian directors, were critically received both in the Balkan region as well as
internationally, because they were proposing to share the question of guilt. The opponents
of the films argued that, because the Serbs were the main aggressor in the war, it would be
inappropriate for them to propose to share the guilt with other ethnic groups. However, I
can understand why this filmic trope is often used by Balkan directors. It is undoubtedly
clear that the Serbs were the main aggressor in the Balkan conflict. However, all sides were
engaged in armed conflict and ethnic cleansing. It’s easy to classify Serbian films with an ‘all
sides are guilty’ approach as Serbian propaganda. However, when one takes a closer look, it
becomes clear that these films, like PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, are multi‐layered and often
include a strong anti‐war message. They move beyond the issue of guilt and show that
everyone is involved in a destructive war. In addition, it can be argued that these directors
want to show the complexities of the conflict, instead of providing us with a clear black and
white heroic Hollywood narrative. 42
Brooke, Peter. ‘ Remarks on the Film: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’. Personal Website Peter Brooke.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/pbrooke/bptdg/programmes/0601‐/village/brooke
55
Going back to the films, on the small and personal level of the soldiers, the guilt is equally
divided. But, on another level, Tanović and Dragojević are undoubtedly pointing fingers at
politics and political processes. Firstly, Tanović is ridiculing and critiquing the role of the UN
and its way of dealing with difficult wartime situations. Colonel Soft and Captain Dubois are
both extreme caricatures, complacent, utterly incompetent and reluctant to do anything else
but quietly monitor the situation. Colonel Soft would rather play a game of chess with his
short skirted secretary than deal with any problems. The first shot of Captain Dubois also
speaks for itself: we see him sitting in his office, feet up at his desk, reading what seems to
be an inappropriate magazine which he quickly stuffs away when someone knocks on his
door. The UN mandates in highly volatile and dangerous areas, like Rwanda and Bosnia, have
become a controversial subject. The UN troops are there as peacekeepers, not peace
enforcers. Their mandate requires them to observe atrocities without being able to do
anything about it. They cannot retaliate as it would jeopardize their neutral position.43 Tanović places the largest part of the blame with those who are high up in the ranks, and
therefore, largely in charge of the outcome of the situation in the trench. Marchand really
wants to help Nino and Ciki, which is why he ignores his mandate and visits the trench
anyway. He is fed up with his assigned neutrality, tired of sitting around and waiting until the
war is over. Colonel Soft, on the other hand, is going out of his way to avoid dealing with the
situation. He does not care about two men stuck in no man’s land and it is not until he
watches the indicting news report on the situation in the trench that he actually decides to
try and save the situation (and his face and that of the UN). The news report is, in itself,
Tanović’ second explicit referral to the question of guilt. The archival images of the war show
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić making threats of war and the extermination of the
Muslims. After this a voice‐over continues Radovan Karadžić didn’t wait long to carry out his threats. Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces, largely
helped by the Yugoslav army, furiously attacked Bosnian cities that were defended only by armed
civilians and the rest of the police forces, loyal to the Bosnian government. Serbs started massive
43
A moving television series about this painful neutrality is Peter Kosminsky’s WARRIORS (1999) which follows a
group of English blue helmets in Bosnia. Kosminsky shows the deep desperation and frustration of these
soldiers when they are yet again confronted with horrors and unable to act on them. The difficult and
problematic position of the UN in conflict zones is also explored in films on the Rwanda genocide like in HOTEL
RWANDA Terry George, 2004), SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (Roger Spottiswoode, 2007) and SHOOTING DOGS (Michael
Caton‐Jones, 2005).
56
attacks against civilian targets, spreading fear and terror and introducing a new term: ethnical
cleansing. These words are accompanied by real archival footage of a war‐torn Bosnia, heavily
wounded people and large scale attacks. Tanović is thus clearly pointing his finger to the
Serb forces as the main culprit in the conflict and the main instigator of violence. He also
shows that the Serbs in power are responsible, not those fighting for them, as the role of the
naïve and pacifist Nino makes clear. It is noteworthy that Tanović uses a news report when it
comes to the question of guilt. It seems he needs this ‘neutral’ third party when he wants to
address the issue of responsibility and guilt. The archival images give the indictment more
emotional power, as if Tanović wanted to say: look, this is real, this is what actually
happened in Bosnia and I have images to prove it. I already pointed out the fact that Dragojević addresses the causal relation between the
corrupt nature of communism, its subsequent breakdown and the ‘91‐‘95 war. However,
Dragojević is also, like Tanović, pointing a finger to the Serb nationalists, although in a less
direct manner. The film is interspersed with nationalist Serbian symbols: the three fingers
(the hardcore nationalist sign)44, nationalist slogans like ‘Serbia to Tokyo’ and the falcon on
the caps of Laza and Fork. Dragojevic uses the story line of Laza and Fork to strongly criticize
the role of the Serb nationalists. The two friends are gullible peasants who believe the
nationalist propaganda they see on the television. This scene in itself is noteworthy. Laza,
Fork and their families are gathered around a television that is standing outside, probably in
order to get a good reception. This is clearly a special event for them, to watch television
with the entire family. The scene shows the widespread influence of the medium of
television, which was able to reach many people in the outskirts of Serbia and Bosnia. People
who, like Laza and Fork, had lived secluded and isolated lives, not coming into contact with
other ethnic groups. As I already stated earlier in this thesis, the rural areas were often
already divided along ethnic lines, and people were living very separate lives. Laza and Fork
44
Perhaps an interesting addition: the three fingers (thumb, index finger and middle finger) are very symbolic
of the hardcore Chetnik movement. The sign originates from the fact that the Serbs use these three fingers to
make a cross after praying. The sign returns very often throughout the film. Three is the number of the
nationalist Serbs and it has had such an impact that in Sarajevo, as a Bosniak or Croatian, you will never give
someone three kisses when you meet them, only two. When you make a mistake and give three anyway, you
will have to add one more to avoid the number of three. When holding up three fingers, a Bosniak will also
never use the fingers used by the Serbs, but rather the ring finger, the middle finger and the index finger.
57
watch the propagandist message shown on television and especially Laza is incited by what
he sees. The voice‐over pulls out all of the (seemingly absurd) clichés of Jihad fanatics with
swords between their teeth. In addition, it plays on the feelings of victimhood and heroism
by talking about the ‘poorly armed Serbs’ who are ‘heroically holding their own’. This message of victimhood and readiness to fight for land can be connected to an important
myth in Serbian history, namely that of the 1389 Kosovo battle. The 1389 battle between
Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, under Prince Lazar’s command, was lost by the Serbs.
Branimir Anzulovic states that this loss of power was traumatic for the Serbs who turned into
second‐class citizens. Floribert Baudet and Anton de Baets describe how this event was, in
the beginning of the nineteenth century, consciously cultivated and transformed into a
national ideology by intellectuals like Vuk Karadžić. The Serbian uprising against the Ottoman
empire in the beginning of the nineteenth century triggered the idea of avenging the defeat
at Kosovo in 1389. As Baudet and de Baets state: ‘De Servische Opstanden van de vroege
19e eeuw markeren het omslagpunt in het politieke gebruik van de Kosovomythe. Een
oproep om ‘Kosovo te wreken’ is na die tijd keer op keer een krachtige rallying cry
gebleken’.45
The death of Prince Lazar was seen as a martyr’s death, because he chose the heavenly
kingdom over earth. The choice to die in battle was thus turned into a spiritual triumph. Kosovo, 1389, was a definite affirmation of the Christian identity of the Serbian people; it was
experienced as the triumph of martyrdom and in no way as a defeat. It has been lyricized in the hymns
of victory with radiance and joy that the God‐blessed Serbian nation was crowned with a martyr’s
wreath which, from that point on, became its true and indestructible zenith. It signifies the triumph of
spirit over body, eternal life over death, justice over injustice, truth over deceit, sacrifice over avarice,
love over hate and force. This is what Serbian Kosovo signifies as sung about in the epic folk poetry
which was inspired by this monumental historic event.46 Violence was turned into something spiritual: the Serbs fought for what they considered to
be their land and were not afraid to die. The Kosovo myth was somewhat dormant during
45
Baudet, Floribert, Antoon de Baets. ‘Het geheugen op spitsroeden’, Feit en Fictie, IV/3 (zomer 1999):
pp.100‐111: p. 106 ‘The Serbian Uprisings of the early nineteenth century marked the turning point in the political use of the
Kosovo myth. A call to ‘revenge Kosovo’ has, time after time, proved to be a powerful rallying cry’.
46
William Dorich quoting Dimitrije Bogdanović in ‘The Heavenly Kingdom in Serbia’s Historic Destiny’. Extract
from Dorich’ book Kosovo. Alhambra: Kosovo Charity Fund, 1992. Website Serbian Network Bookstore. http://
www.srpska‐mreza.com/bookstore/kosovo/kosovo14.htm
58
Tito’s rule, but was fully revived by Serbian nationalists after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Even
now, images of Prince Lazar are used quite often, even just recently by angry Serbs who
were protesting against the independence of Kosovo. We see this notion of victimhood, the
cultivated idea of impending danger and the encouraged readiness to fight surrounding the
Kosovo myth also return in the television program Laza and Fork watch. History repeats itself again. Evil hordes have risen against the Serbian people. Ustasha criminals and
bloodthirsty mercenaries, fanatics of Allah’s jihad. Swords between their teeth, they are attacking the
poorly armed Serbs, heroically holding their own. They are ready to defend their homeland from
fascist Croatia, a country supported by treacherous world powers determined to draw a new map of
Europe and call it a new world order.
Dragojević makes sure we understand his denouncement and ridicule of this incited
nationalist message. Laza’s ignorance about the origins of the Muslim truck driver expose
the enormous gap between an imagined identity and reality. In addition, Fork’s naively
constructed myth with regard to the superiority of the Serbian nation is another example of
this (nationalist) imagined identity. However, it is important to emphasize that the
representation of Laza and Fork is not one‐sided, nor a direct attack on them. They are just
simple‐hearted men who are drawn into the Serbian propaganda machine. Their love for
each other is touching and Fork is inconsolable when Laza dies. Dragojević thus strongly
critiques the Serb nationalist movement, Milošević and his allies, and shows how their false
propaganda is one of the reasons for Serbs to join the army and fight against what they
perceive as bloodthirsty enemies. Politics has now almost become a dirty word in several of the Balkan countries. When I
tentatively asked a girl in my guest house in Sarajevo about the political situation in Bosnia
she let out a very deep sigh stating: ‘That’s something that doesn’t work in Bosnia’. She told
me about the current troubles in the Bosnian Federation, the fact that the three
representatives have a hard time reaching an agreement on basically anything. This
pessimist attitude is also reflected in other texts. In the diary of Zlata Filipović, a young girl in
Sarajevo who wrote down her feelings during the war, she addresses the issue of guilt: ‘I
keep asking why? What for? Who’s to blame? I ask but there’s no answer. All I know is that
we are living in misery. Yes, I know, politics is to blame for it all’.47 It is thus not that hard to
47
Filipović, Zlata. Zlata’s Diary. London: Viking, 1994:p.62
59
understand why people are nostalgically thinking back of the Titoist era, a time of relative
peace and prosperity. 6.4 The Representation of the Nature of War and Violence
NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME depict the war in different ways. NO MAN’S LAND
emphasizes the general passivity on both of the warring sides. The two parties are not
constantly fighting and bombing each other. On the contrary, waiting forms an important
part of the daily task of a soldier. There are no heroic actions, no spectacular shootings, no
clearly defined goal. The representation of the war is thus very different from the images we
often see in other war films. Tanović makes sure we understand that the war is not
something to get kick out of, a rush of adrenaline. On the contrary, the war has constructed
a strange new status quo where both sides are reluctantly waiting for something to happen.
Nino and Ciki find themselves in the odd and unexpected position of coming face to face
with the assigned enemy. The fact that the Other is so near changes the rules of the game
and the use of violence. The enemy has moved from being an unspecified figure to a flesh
and blood counterpart, a mirror image. Nino and Ciki struggle with the moral implications of
this new situation. Seeing eye to eye with someone who is, in many ways, a lot like you
makes it difficult to use violence. Especially in the beginning of the film, Nino and Ciki use
violence only as a way of self‐defense. They use guns to force the other into complying. Later
on in the film, a knife is used as a threatening device. Nino and Ciki do not really engage in
explicit physical struggles, with the exception of Nino’s attempt to kill Ciki with the knife.
Ciki seems to be the one more accustomed to using violence, but he too makes the
conscious choice not to kill Nino. The way they are frantically holding on to their guns,
nervously moving around each other, shows their inexperience with this unexpected face‐to‐
face situation. They are thus delivering a fight on many levels, not only against each other,
but also against themselves and against the loss of morality. In a different situation, they
could have been friends, but in the trench they are constantly forced into a pattern of
hostility and animosity. This realization, the fact that things could have been completely
different if it wasn’t wartime, makes the violence used by Nino and Ciki extra painful. 60
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME features more of the well‐known elements of a war film. Shootings,
bombings, constant threats, an enemy that remains in the shadows, as well as a diverse
army unit which needs to work through some issues of its own. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME,
the enemy remains at a safe distance and violence is channeled through the use of guns and
grenades. In the ethnic cleansing scenes, there is one representation of violence, when a
man on fire comes running out of a house and is shot by the unit. The shoot‐outs between
the two armies in the tunnel always take place at a safe distance from each other, so that
they never have to look the other army in the eyes.
There are three instances of cruel bodily violence, which are all represented rather
ambiguously. Milan’s mother is killed in a brutal way, blood spraying over the walls with
images of her anguished face, but it remains unclear who the perpetrator is.48 Furthermore,
the Bosniaks suggest that they are circumcising one of the unit members off‐screen, but we
never learn if this is real or enacted. They also send
out the maimed schoolteacher, but it remains
unclear what happened to her and if the Bosniaks
were really responsible. But still, the violence
between the Serbs and Bosniaks is different from NO
MAN’S LAND, in which Nino and Ciki constantly need to
Figure 8: Milan and Velja: ‘Pretty villages
make pretty flames’ look each other in the face, painfully realizing that
maybe they are not that different at all. However, both films counter the idea of the Balkans as a primordial place full of cruel bodily
violence. When talking about the nature of war, it is important to address the idea of the
Balkans as a region that has always been subjected to (primordial) violence and war. Almost
every work on the Balkan region points out this longstanding (false) image. The difference
between older and more recent works is that the recent works critically question this image
of violence and century long ethnic hatred. John B. Allcock talks about the ‘[…] area whose
name has come to be synonymous with violence, fragmentation and disorder’49, Branimir
48
The nationalist slogan on the wall of Milan’s mother, ‘Bosnia to Tokyo’, seems to be a reply to the earlier
shown ‘Serbia to Tokyo’. However, the lay‐out of the slogan and the handwriting give us reason to believe that
it has been written down by the same person. This suggests that Milan’s mother was killed by Serbs, who then
tried to make it seem as if Bosniaks were responsible.
49
Allcock, John B. Explaining Yugoslavia. London: Hurst, 2000: p.2
61
Anzulovic describes the pervasive ‘myth of the ancient hatreds’50 whereby the parties
involved are portrayed as incorrigible brutes who have been at each other’s throats for
centuries. Balkan scholar Maria Todorova states that In a less analytical vein, a popular if unedifying stereotype portrays the Balkans as a region cursed with
too much history per square mile, with an excess of historical memory, protracted hatreds, and a
proliferation of obstinate and incompatible ethnic and religious identities.51 In the summary of the extensive NIOD‐rapport on Srebrenica, Peter Bootsma talks about the
alleged ‘Balkan man’ who differs from the West‐European man because of his innate
predisposition to violence.52 In his sociological work Explaining Yugoslavia, John B. Allcock recognizes the stereotypes of
violence when it comes to a discussion of the Balkan area. However, he feels it is important
to address the issue as it is such a salient feature of the Yugoslav history. Allcock states that
in order to understand the violence in the Balkans it is essential to recognize its structured
character. Violence is not necessarily random, arbitrary, meaningless, pathological or antisocial. It may be
patterned, directed, significant, normal and constitutive of the social. This claim is also true of our own
society, of course, only we find it more difficult to recognize its truth.53
Allcock explains his statement about the structured dimension of violence in the Balkans by
referring to a history of militarization. From the Ottoman rule to the Habsburg rule to WWII
and the communist rule, military institutions and armed conflict were an essential part of
the consolidation and continuation of the state. Allcock then addresses the issue of the blood feud and our misunderstanding of the concept.
He states that in modern Western Europe, we regard the blood feud as a spontaneous
primitive and backward way of revenge, an eye‐for‐an‐eye solution for heated conflicts.
Allcock, however, states that this is a misunderstanding of the phenomenon, as the feud is a
highly structured endeavor too.
50
Anzulovic 1999: p.170
Todorova, Maria ed. Balkan identites: nation and memory. London: Hurst, 2004: p.2
52
Bootsma, Peter. Srebrenica: het officiële NIOD‐rapport samengevat. Amsterdam: Boom, 2002: p.9
53
Allcock 2000: p.384
51
62
[…] one did not seek revenge because of an uncivilized disregard for convention. One sought to take
blood as a duty. The occasion upon which blood vengeance had to be sought, the agent who was
required to enact it and the means by which the debt of blood had to be assuaged were all codified in
terms known to all.54
And Allcock explains that ‘its waning has been brought about by the extension of effective
state power: the monopolization of the use of legitimate force by the state’.55 So, in Allcock’s
opinion, the feud is not a breakdown of order, but the implementation of it. He then
connects this to the phenomenon of ethnic cleansing.
[…] this observation throws into sharp relief the question which so frequently accompanies reports of
“ethnic cleansing” in the British press: “How could they possibly do this to their neighbours?” The
point which this question fails to grasp is that traditional codes of morality in the past would have
required that people be ready to kill their neighbours, as these were precisely the people with whom it
was most likely that one might be “in blood”.56 Allcock’s statement seems rather bold, but it makes sense when we reconsider the
(Western) link between the blood feud and the idea of primitivism and primordial violence.
Allcock looks at the function of violence within the Balkan cultures and emphasizes its
structured nature. The blood feud is not an individualistic and anarchic irrational
phenomenon. On the contrary, when, where and how a blood feud might occur is clearly
defined by conditions and rules known to all. The blood feud is thus not a failure of social
restraint, but an implementation of it. In this light, we might indeed find a (part of the)
explanation as to why ethnic cleansing could occur. On the other hand, I feel that Allcock, by
not elaborating further on this statement, glosses over the enormous emotional and
psychological impact of ethnic violence, of killing former friends and neighbors. He leaves his
statement up in the air and does not look further into the connection he proposes, such as
looking at possible differences between cities and rural villages and the extent to which the
structured nature of violence actually played a role in ethnic cleansing. Allcock thus not only counters the Western idea of primordial violence in the Balkans by
showing that certain forms of violence have a social and cultural function, he also exposes
the hypocrisy when it comes to violence in the West and violence in the ‘Rest’.
54
Allcock 2000: p.388
Allcock 2000: p.389
56
Allcock 2000: p.390
55
63
Perhaps it is true that Balkan societies are more violent than “western” societies, perhaps not.
Nevertheless, we should not overlook the possibility that our perception of difference rests in part
upon the existence within “western” societies of mechanisms which systematically suppress the open
portrayal of certain kinds of violence when they occur “at home”.57
Do the Balkans really have more ‘primitive violence’ than the West? And what does
‘primitive violence’ consist of? Allcock puts question marks behind many of the stereotypes
surrounding Balkan violence, but in a different way than other scholars. Instead of negating
any form of (physical) violence in the Balkans, Allcock appoints it and then makes us wonder
what exactly constitutes primordial and primitive violence. Is a blood feud more primitive
than the Western form of violence, consisting of guns, heavy artillery and long distance
attacks?
The same question can be asked with regard to violence in Balkan films and violence in
Western films. The idea of an amoral backward Balkan region with primitive and ongoing
violent wars and conflicts, has also found its way into feature films. However, the fact
remains that violence also plays a very important role in many Hollywood films. Hollywood
war films can be extremely violent and we should not forget that entire genres are build
around violence, like in westerns and kung fu films. Why is it that Balkan violence seems so
much more brutal? Are these films really more violent than a mainstream Hollywood war
film? Dina Iordanova talks about the fact that
The popular perception of Balkan violence involves ethnographic particularities, such as dagger‐
piercing, throat‐slitting, or roasting on a spit. It is a face‐to‐face sadistic fervor involving blood, spilled
guts, severed limbs, tortured and mutilated bodies, and one that is certainly far from any hi‐tech
approaches like sniper‐shooting or precision bombing.58 Further on she states that ‘[…] most Western explorations of Balkan violence move within a
representative framework, where the Balkans emerge as inhabited by violence‐crazed and
violence‐craving people, who are explicitly shown to enjoy the violence they perpetrate’.59
She refers to films like SAVIOR (1998), in which a Serbian soldier cuts off a Muslim woman’s
finger with a knife, and the Italian film ELVIS AND MARILYN (1998) in which the Bosnian characters
57
Allcock 2000: p.383
Iordanova 2001: p.162
59
Iordanova 2001: p.163
58
64
are all delighting in (bodily) cruelty. The problem thus seems to lie in the depiction of
violence in some of the films about the Balkans. The stereotypical representation of the
region as a place of primordial violence is, according to Iordanova, maintained in many
Western films about the Balkans. The Balkans are still seen as a ‘dark place’, a region of
barbaric peasants and traditional and irrational eye‐for‐an‐eye violence. But we should ask ourselves the question, keeping Allcock in the back of our minds, whether
this violence can really be considered as being ‘primitive’. What does ‘primitive’ violence
consist of? Does channeling the violence through machinery make it ‘cleaner’ or less brutal?
Why do we have such a problem with this type of violence? Do we not see extreme physical
violence in other films too? For instance, films about the Vietnam war, the Rwandan
genocide and the Holocaust also often feature scenes of sadistic physical violence. Physical
violence forms a part of any war, not only during the war in the Balkans. To disregard these
films, like Iordanova does, because they are showing false stereotypes is to negate
important visual information. Indeed, SAVIOR shows several scenes including brutal physical
violence, but these violent acts are very symbolic of a power struggle. The Serbian soldier
cuts off the Bosniak woman’s finger to show his superiority. In addition, he wants to prove
himself to the main character, an American mercenary fighting for the Serbs. He wants to
show that he is a tough and masculine soldier who does not care about a Bosniak woman.
Later in the film, he kicks a Serbian pregnant woman in the stomach because she was raped
by a Bosniak. He is not just doing this out of a sadistic longing for brutal violence but again,
the violence is very symbolic. According to the Serbian soldier, the woman betrayed her
people and should therefore be punished. To classify his violence solely as sadistic and
violence‐craving is to add to the stereotype, while after taking a closer look it becomes
apparent that the violence is more layered. In addition, the film also shows the (self‐)
destructive nature of this type of violence. The Serbian soldier tries to kill one of his own
people and so does the father of the Serbian girl, who feels she has disgraced the family
honor by being raped. The film makes it clear that violence is not necessarily only targeted at
the enemy, but that it can also take place within a certain ethnic group.
Iordanova also argues that films made by directors from the region are, as opposed to the
Western directors, giving us a different take on violence, aiming first to show the self‐
65
destructive nature of the violent acts, something we see return in NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY
VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. Again, I disagree with Iordanova’s rigid distinction. First of all, SAVIOR is
directed by Pedrag Antonijević, a Serbian director, who worked in Yugoslavia before going to
America and teaming up with Oliver Stone for SAVIOR. This means that, technically, the film is
not solely a Western ‘outsider’ exploration of the war. Western explorations of the Balkan
war are, however, also very capable of showing the destructive nature of the war without
needing to emphasize the enjoyment of violence by Balkan people, like in WARRIORS and DE
ENCLAVE. Secondly, films from Balkan directors also include images of the violence‐crazed
Balkan man and thus perpetuate the stereotype, like in Milcho Manchevski’s (a Macedonian
director) BEFORE THE RAIN, in which a gang of stereotypical barbaric highlanders thoroughly
enjoys using violence. 6.5 The Representation of the Effects of War
One thing is made absolutely clear when looking at NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY
FLAME. They both show the inevitable and forceful (self‐) destructive effect of the war. They
provide us with an unglamorous and critical look on the mechanism of war and the effects of
war on its participating parties. Both films are clear in their portrayal of the devastating
effect of the war, both on society, surroundings and individuals. It seems impossible to
counter the destructive force of (incited) hatred between the ethnic groups. Nino is clearly
an inexperienced soldier, unaware of the codes of conduct on the battlefield. Throughout
the film, we see how Nino is slowly sucked into the wartime mechanism of violence and
hatred. At the end of the film, his naïveté has turned into hateful suspicion and he is unable
to see anything human in the face of the enemy. Ciki, in turn, is not a coldhearted killer
either. Although he blocks any attempt at a friendly conversation, we also see another, more
human, side to him. There is a point in the film where Ciki points his gun at Nino, ready to kill
him. However, he can’t and turns away, telling Cera that ‘we’re not like them’. Later on,
after snubbing Nino who tried to introduce himself, he apologizes, and a friendly
conversation follows. All these small moments show a glimpse of what once was and could
be again. Tanović, however, makes sure one also sees how, despite these moments of hope,
hatred and resentment between the two increases. It is war, and Nino and Ciki realize that
they are enemies, unable to escape the logic of this war. Even if Nino and Ciki have a small
66
moment of understanding and similarity, it is immediately overruled by their suspicion and
animosity. The same holds for PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, the happy
childhood memories cannot stop Milan or Halil from
engaging in armed conflict against what they consider to be
the ultimate enemy. Again, the flashbacks show us a world
wherein people just lived side by side, without really caring
about one’s ethnic or religious background. The scene at the
Figure 9: Milan in the hospital
garage, when Milan shoots ‘his own’ because they are
burning the garage he opened with Halil is another example of changing morals and Milan’s
attempt to resist this change. He is furious when he sees the Serbian soldiers burn his
garage. These soldiers are literally destroying one of the moral markers of the past and
Milan finds himself caught between the old and the new world. At that moment, Milan is
clearly choosing to hold on to the important value of friendship and love. It does not really
matter who is burning his garage, because he would have shot anybody. However, the war
causes Milan to give up his resistance to change. The time Milan spends in the tunnel, the
bonding of the unit and the loss of some of its members, have made him extremely hateful
towards the Muslims. This becomes very clear in the hospital sequence, when Milan projects
all of his anger and resentment on the Muslim soldier lying in the other room. He seems
unable to remember a time where a Muslim was his closest and dearest friend. Instead, he is
consumed by his feelings of hatred and revenge. Hatred and war do not only cause the destruction of the enemy and a formerly peaceful
society, but in the end also the destruction of oneself. In his book Man and Society in
Calamity, Pitirim A. Sorokin gives a clear and well‐defined outline of what happens to people
when confronted with calamities. He describes two basic cognitive effects.
The first of these effects consists in the tendency of all cognitive processes to be concentrated more
and more upon the calamity and the phenomena that are directly and indirectly connected with it,
together with increasing insensitivity (beginning with sensation and perception) towards extraneous
elements’[his emphasis].60 60
Sorokin, Pitirim A. Man and society in calamity: the effects of war, revolution, famine, pestilence upon human
mind, behavior, social organization and cultural life. New York: Dutton, 1942: p.28
67
The calamity becomes the central focus of both the conscious and the subconscious mind,
something we see return in both NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME. I would argue
that this first cognitive effect can be linked to the destructive side of the war. The main
characters in both of the films are focused on killing the enemy, increasingly unable and
unwilling to regard the other side as even remotely human. Both parties seem to have
become desensitized to the sufferings of the opposing forces. The fact that the cognitive
processes are concentrated on the war means the characters are slowly losing the idea of
what a pre‐war society looked like. Therefore, they feel less for this society and are
increasingly focused on the complete destruction of the enemy. The second effect results in a
[…] tendency toward disintegration of the unity of our “self” and of mental functioning. It manifests
itself in an increasing incapacity to concentrate on objects unrelated to the calamity, in a growing
dependence of our thinking upon fortuitous external influences; in a decreasing autonomy and self‐
regulation of our thoughts, independently of external stimuli; and, finally, in an access of various forms
of mental disease. In brief, calamities promote the growth of mental disorderliness and
disorganization’.61 This second cognitive effect constitutes the self‐destructive part of the war that both of the
films portray. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, several members of the unit slowly lose their grip
on reality. Dehydration, stress and the constant threat of death begin to have an effect on
the mental state of some of the soldiers. After losing his good friend Laza, and after shooting
the schoolteacher, Fork seems to have lost it. He mumbles that he is going home and slowly
walks out of the tunnel. When stumbling outside he takes on a Jesus‐like pose and for a
moment, it seems as if the Muslim soldiers have gone because nothing happens. But several
seconds later, Fork is shot multiple times, a scene which is filmed in slow motion so that we
have enough time to see the effects of the bullets entering Fork’s body. Velja is another
character that loses his mind and decides that he cannot take it anymore. Just like Fork, he
becomes reckless and walks towards the opening of the tunnel while shooting and singing.
He is shot several times, but does not even seem to notice. His delirious mind eventually
causes him to commit suicide. Speedy and the Professor find it hard to deal with the
situation too. Speedy shields himself from the outside world with his Walkman, desperately
61
Sorokin 1942: p.35
68
trying to avoid the overstimulation of his senses. The peaceful and rational Professor is, like
Nino in NO MAN’S LAND, also sucked into the mechanism of war and violence. Although
resisting violence at the beginning of the film, there is a scene where he loses his beliefs and
shoots at the Bosniaks like a maniac, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Another example of (self‐) destruction occurs when the unit shoots the schoolteacher. It is
one of the most painful examples of the effects of the war on human (inter) action. Milan
has fond memories of his schoolteacher, spying on her with Halil when she was having sex
with the mailman Nazim. She represents a peaceful and joyous past, a time where a Serbian
schoolteacher could have an affair with a Muslim mailman without any attention given to
their ethnic backgrounds. On the contrary, when the schoolteacher and Nazim hear that Tito
has died they both cry for a country that is lost. But here she comes walking into the tunnel,
a victim of war crimes and visibly numbed by the atrocities she endured. The unit panics
when they see her, fearing that the Muslims have planted explosives on her. The heated
discussion that follows her entrance, about whether or not to shoot her, exemplifies one of
the moral decisions one is forced to make in wartime: Do you shoot one of your own people
if you do not trust the situation? Milan finds himself unable to do so, but in the end, Fork
does the job. It is even more painful when they find out that the schoolteacher did not have
explosives on her, so that they killed one of their own people for nothing. Dragojević thus
shows that the war makes people turn on each other. Not only do rigid classifications of
ethnicity and religion, imposed by leaders, start to divide people, but these divisions also
occur within a certain group or even within an individual, causing a destruction of the self.
Nino and Ciki too are on a path of self‐destruction. The balance between these two men is
constantly shifting so that, throughout the film, there is always one who is angry and wants
to take revenge on the other. All of the violence that occurs between them is, in some way
or another, an act of retribution for something that happened earlier. Nino and Ciki thus
cannot break the cycle of violence because they both perpetuate the idea that they need to
get even with the other person. This back‐and‐forth between them continues all the way to
the end of the film, when Ciki wants to get even with Nino, who attacked him with a knife.
Ciki shoots Nino as a final retribution, but is shot himself by the UN soldier standing next to
Nino.
69
NO MAN’S LAND is an interesting and noteworthy film because it focuses on two individuals to
represent the mechanism of war. By showing two men who are determined to kill each
other, Tanović brings us back to the core of war and genocide: Why do people go to war
against each other, why do people commit genocide? NO MAN’S LAND shows that Nino and Ciki
look the same, speak the same language and know the same people. However, they want to
kill each other and we are left wondering why. Tanović reveals the absurdity of war, not by
showing explicit images of genocide and war, but by playing out the similarities and
differences between these two men.
Both of the analyzed films thus want to show the (self‐) destructive side of the war in the
Balkans.62 No glamorous spectacles, no heroic actions, no clearly defined victor, no happy
endings: the war is a tedious, painful and destructive endeavor. It is important to note that
this self‐destruction functions on different levels. First of all, the self‐destruction takes place
on a psychological level. The films show the effect of the war on the individual mind, the
slow process of growing mental instability and disintegration of the individual. None of the
main characters is able to escape this psychological self‐destruction. Sorokin already argued
that it is one of the two basic changes in our cognitive make‐up when confronted with a
calamity.
The second level of (self‐) destruction is on a sociological level. The war destroys former
social and human ties. Sorokin describes this process of destruction by stating that
The old loyalties and social ties are either weakened or destroyed, and the new ones are not yet
established. Under these conditions one’s behavior becomes formless, chaotic and inconsistent,
uncontrolled by any clear‐cut norms, increasingly dependent upon casual external circumstances.
Hence there ensues widespread desocialization, demoralization, and even brutalization.63
62
(Self‐)destruction is an element that is present throughout the history of Balkan films. We can find the theme
of (self‐) destruction in many of the Black Wave films made in the sixties, which exposed the suffering and
hardships of day‐to‐day life in the Balkans and showed a grim and bleak outlook on social reality. Aleksandar
Petrović, Živojin Pavlović and Želimir Žilnik’ are filmmakers dealing with (self‐) destruction. More recent films
include Dragojević’ RANE, which he shot after PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, a film which deals with two young
Belgrade men and their rise in the gangster scene in a war torn Serbia. Other recent films are Goran Paskaljević’
BURE BARUTA (POWDER KEG or CABARET BALKAN), Milcho Manchevski’s BEFORE THE RAIN, Boro Drasković’ VUKOVAR POSTE
RESTANTE and Emir Kusturica’s UNDERGROUND.
63
Sorokin 1942: p.120
70
Connected to the destruction of social and individual unity is the level of destruction of
morality. The norms and moral values that were instilled and respected during peace are
often forcefully reconsidered and adjusted during wartime. The destruction of a previous
moral can be so violent that some scholars even question if war and ethics can go together.
Others hold that wartime does not signal a complete absence of any moral rules, but that
existing rules are changed and rearticulated. The Serbian unit would have never killed the
schoolteacher in peaceful daily life, but the war forces them to change their moral patterns,
to abandon certain beliefs and to adopt a new set of rules. This does not mean that former
moral rules are forgotten. On the contrary, it is the friction between the old and the new
that makes these war films painful to watch. It is the memory of the past that lingers in the
present actions of the main characters and influences their individual and social wellbeing. The last level of (self‐) destruction concerns politics. Both films may not explicitly show how
politics have caused the war and how war influences politics, but both films do refer to the
politics of destruction and the destruction of politics on a metaphorical level. NO MAN’S LAND
accuses world politics of not doing anything to solve the situation. The film shows how the
international powers deal with a precarious situation, namely by doing next to nothing, not
really caring about the people they are supposed to help. Cera, whose character is a
metaphoric representation of the unarmed and innocent civilians, is left behind. His passive
state of being throughout the film, his inability to change anything about the situation and
the fact that he is lying on a bomb refers to the explosive and helpless situation in which
civilians find themselves during a war. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, Dragojević explores the
destructive force of the legacy of communism, the politics of Serbian nationalists and those
influenced by them. The film shows the destruction of a country, its surroundings and the
former friendships and social ties of its people.
71
7. Conclusion
The last shots of both NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME show the essence of
Tanović’ and Dragojević’ filmic message. In addition, these powerful and beautiful shots are
the most poignant examples of the overall destructive effect of the war. In NO MAN’S LAND, the
camera is pointed on Cera, lying still while darkness
falls. Slowly, the camera tilts up and we hear a non‐
diegetic woman voice singing. While the camera zooms
out, the horrible reality of the situation hits us: here is a
man, representative of a society in war, who is left
alone to die. He will not survive this ordeal, there will
not be a happy end. He is a doomed man, a victim of a
Figure 10: Cera
situation he did not ask for. Everybody else can go home, close the door and forget about
what happened, but not this man. Amidst the chaos and destruction of wartime, he is
trapped in an inescapable position. In PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME, Dragojević ends with a
flashback to the first day of the war. Milan and Halil are sitting and drinking together. Halil
looks at Milan and whispers ‘We got nicely drunk, didn’t we?’ He adds: ‘Tell me, will that war
really happen?’ Milan looks at him with a smile and replies ‘What war?’ Again, this scene
painfully reminds us of the fact that the war did happen. Like in NO MAN’S LAND, we wonder
how it could have happened that these two friends moved from eternal friendship to deep
hatred. The film makes us realize what has been destroyed by the war. Halil is dead, Milan is
(close to being) dead and what they represented, their loving union, is completely destroyed
by a meaningless war.
NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME both give a critical look at the (self‐) destructive
nature of the war and its effects. Although the two films are concentrated on the
Bosnian/Serbian conflict, it becomes clear that they are also dealing with war on a more
general level. No heroic spectacles, no glamorous depiction of violence, no positive
resolution or happy ending. The two films have a strong anti‐war theme, exposing the ugly
destructive side of war and the wartime mechanism. This destruction takes place on many
levels: we witness the breaking down of a peaceful society, former friendships, morality,
newly formed alliances and in the end, even the destruction of the self. The films show a
72
society that is caught between the past and the present, between a time of relative peace
and a society in war. The friction between these two layers of time, between these two
(possible) realities, makes the films painful and memorable. Dragojevic’ aims to counter the stereotypical image of the (Bosnian) Serb as the evil and
bloodthirsty aggressor. His characters represent the diversity of the Serbian population and
Dragojevic makes sure we identify and sympathize with them. The consequence of
emphasizing the Serbian side of the war is that the Bosniak side remains somewhat
underrepresented. However, to classify the film as Serbian propaganda is a serious error in
judgment, as the film not only strongly critiques the role of the Serbs in the war but also
moves beyond the question of who was right and who was wrong to show the overall
destructive effect of the war on people in general. NO MAN’S LAND aims to critically represent
all of the parties involved in the conflict, including the UNPROFOR and the media, and
nobody escapes Tanović’ judgment.
Both Tanović and Dragojević address the issue of guilt, showing that everybody takes a share
in the blame by using an ‘all sides are guilty’ approach. However, both filmmakers are also
specifically pointing fingers at the ambiguous role of Tito’s communist Yugoslavia, the
extreme nationalists and their forceful means of propaganda, and international forces like
the UNPROFOR. When looking at the history of Balkan cinema, these films closely relate to
the ‘60s genre of the Black Wave cinema, which also painfully and critically exposed the
darker sides of the Yugoslav society, focusing on self‐destructive characters. Comedic
elements form an important part of the analyzed films and of Balkan cinema in general,
simultaneously alleviating, as well as intensifying, the tragic subject matter. I have argued against Balkan cinema scholar Dina Iordanova, who makes a rigid distinction
between the primitive violence shown by Western directors and the (self‐) destructive
violence shown by native filmmakers. We need to be critical of the notion of ‘primitive’
violence and look at the multi‐layered nature of certain forms of depicted physical violence.
NO MAN’S LAND and PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME do not, however, contribute to the image of
extreme physical Balkan violence, but instead show a violence that is channeled through
guns and grenades and often (reluctantly) used as a form of defense. 73
The films also relate to the corpus of Balkan cinema with regard to their use of defined
spaces of entrapment. The trench in NO MAN’S LAND and the tunnel and hospital in PRETTY
VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME function on a metaphorical level. They symbolize a society trapped in a
cycle of violence and destruction. I have countered Iordanova, who criticizes the self‐
exoticism of Balkan film and claims that tunnels and other dark places are representative of
the (alleged) amoral side of the Balkan people. I have shown that these spaces do not
necessarily signal a lack of morality. On the contrary, certain moral bonds are reinforced and
characters are desperately fighting against the loss of past morals. The spaces of entrapment
are essential in the representation of the Balkan war and its effects. My analyses of these two films have shown that they are noteworthy and rich texts, dealing
with the social, political, psychological and historical elements of war and its effects. These
films present us with a detailed image of a society, country and region caught up in a
destructive war. Both films are more than just war films, they are important historical
documents, which deserve to be analyzed and contextualized.
By using an extensive film analysis, I hope to have accomplished two important goals. First of
all, I hope to have proved that Balkan films rightfully deserve our academic attention.
Although film scholars like Dina Iordanova and Andrew Horton have already paved much of
the way, we need to give more systematic attention to the increasing amount of films
coming out of the Balkan region, so that we can construct a strong and solid academic
corpus. Secondly, I hope that this thesis provides a possible way of approaching these films. I
have tried to construct a comprehensive framework in which the most important themes of
these films have been interwoven with relevant literature and relating films. I am thus
looking forward to the academic developments in the field of Balkan films and I hope to have
contributed some valuable information. 74
8. Bibliography
Allcock, John B. Explaining Yugoslavia. London: Hurst, 2002.
Anzulovic, Branimir. Heavenly Serbia: from myth to genocide. London: Hurst, 1999.
Baudet, Floribert, Antoon de Baets. ‘Het geheugen op spitsroeden’, Feit en Fictie, IV/3 zomer
(1999): pp.100‐111.
Bootsma, Peter. Srebrenica: het officiële NIOD‐rapport samengevat. Amsterdam: Boom,
2002.
Brian Ferguson, R. ‘The General Consequences of War: an Amazonian Perspective’ in: Reyna,
S.P., R.E. Downs. Studying War: Anthropological Perspectives. Langhorne: Gordon and
Breach, 1994.
Brooke, Peter. ‘ Remarks on the Film: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’. Personal Website Peter
Brooke. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/pbrooke/bptdg/programmes/0601‐/village/brooke
Dorich, William. Extracts from: Kosovo. Alhambra: Kosovo Charity Fund, 1992. Website
Serbian Network Bookstore. http://www.srpska‐
mreza.com/bookstore/kosovo/kosovo14.htm
Duijzings, G. Geschiedenis en herinnering in Oost‐Bosnië: de achtergronden van de val van
Srebrenica. Amsterdam: Boom, 2002.
Filipović, Zlata. Zlata’s Diary. London: Viking, 1994.
Horton, Andrew. ‘Laughter Dark &Joyous in Recent Films from the Former Yugoslavia’. Film
Quarterly, Vol.56, No.1 (Autum 2002): pp.23‐28.
75
Iordanova, Dina. Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and Media. London: BFI Publishing,
2001.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: the redemption of physical reality. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960.
Silber, Laura, Allan Little. The Death of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Sorokin, Pitirim A. Man and society in calamity: the effects of war, revolution, famine,
pestilence upon human mind, behavior, social organization and cultural life. New York:
Dutton, 1942.
Todorova, Maria ed. Balkan identites: nation and memory. London: Hurst, 2004.
76
9. Film Credits
NO MAN’S LAND
Title: NO MAN’S LAND / NICIJA ZEMLJA
Land: Bosnia‐Herzegovina/Slovenia/Italy/France/UK/Belgium
Year: 2001
Production Company: Noé Productions
Producer: Marc Baschet, Frédérique Dumas‐Zajdela, Cédomir Kolar
Screenplay: Danis Tanović
Director: Danis Tanović
Cinematography: Walther van den Ende
Editing: Francesca Calvelli
Score: Danis Tanović
Actors: Branco Djurić, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagović and others
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME
Title: PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME / LEPA SELA LEPO GORE
Land: Serbia
Year: 1996
Production Company: Cobra Films
Producer: Dragan Bjelogrlić, Goran Bregogrlić, Milko Josifov, Nikola Kojo
Screenplay: Vanja Bulić, Srdjan Dragojević
Director: Srdjan Dragojević
Cinematography: Dusan Joksimović
Editing: Petar Marković
Score: Aleksandar Habić, Lazar Ristovski
Actors: Dragan Bjelogrlić, Nikola Kojo, Nikola Pejaković, Velimir Zivojinović and others
77
Appendix I: Abstract in Dutch
In deze scriptie wordt onderzoek gedaan naar de representatie van de Balkan oorlog, die
plaatsvond tussen 1991 en 1995, in twee fictie films uit de regio: NO MAN’S LAND (Danis
Tanović, 2001) en PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME (Srdjan Dragojević, 1996). De vraag die centraal
staat is: Hoe representeren NO MAN’S LAND en PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME de Balkan oorlog die
plaatsvond tussen 1991‐1995 en hoe kunnen deze films gecontextualiseerd worden met
betrekking tot de geschiedenis, de Balkan samenleving en hun aanverwante filmcorpora? De
scriptie poogt een kleine maar belangrijke stap te zetten in het gebied van de bestudering
van Balkan cinema door een uitgebreide filmanalyse te maken van de twee films. Hierop
volgt een tweede contextuele analyse, waarbij de belangrijkste thema’s uit de films worden
verbonden aan gerelateerde filmcorpora en relevante literatuur. NO MAN’S LAND vertelt het verhaal van twee mannen, een Serviër en een Moslim, die recht
tegenover elkaar komen te staan in een loopgraaf. PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME richt zich op
twee jeugdvrienden, een Serviër en een Moslim, die door de oorlog uit elkaar worden
gedreven. Er wordt in de scriptie naar vijf belangrijke thema’s gekeken: de representatie van
het communisme; de representatie van de Balkan samenleving; de representatie van politiek
en de schuldvraag; het karakter van de oorlog en het geweld en als laatste de representatie
van de effecten van de oorlog. De films laten zien dat het communisme onder Tito’s Joegoslavië twee gezichten had.
Enerzijds bestond het communisme uit een performatief uiterlijk vertoon dat mensen sterk
met elkaar verbond, anderzijds was corruptie en hypocrisie ook aan de orde van de dag.
PRETTY VILLAGE, PRETTY FLAME legt, zoals ook andere Balkan films, een link tussen de corruptie van
Tito’s Joegoslavië en de conflicten in de jaren negentig. De nauwe, donkere en begrensde
ruimtes in de twee films, ook aanwezig in andere Balkan films zoals in Emir Kusturica’s
UNDERGROUND, zijn belangrijke metaforen. De ruimtes representeren een samenleving
gevangen in een cyclus van geweld en vernietiging. Deze benauwde ruimtes zien we vaker
terugkomen in Balkan cinema en ze zijn essentieel in de representatie van de Balkan oorlog.
De films laten bovendien zien dat iedereen schuld heeft aan de oorlog. De grootste schuld
wordt door de films echter niet gelegd bij de vechtende soldaten maar bij het communisme
78
en bij de nationalistische groeperingen. Ook de Verenigde Naties en de media worden
bekritiseerd. Wat betreft het karakter van de oorlog wordt in beide films ingegaan op het morele verval
dat intreedt en de dilemma’s die dit met zich meebrengt. De films laten constant zien hoe de
Balkan samenleving heen en weer wordt geslingerd tussen een relatief vreedzaam verleden
en een destructief en gewelddadig heden. Deze pijnlijke frictie tussen heden en verleden
toont de absurditeit van het geweld en doet ons nadenken over de redenen achter de oorlog
en haat. Beide films gaan echter tegen het cliché beeld in van de Balkan regio als een gebied
met louter primitief en barbaars geweld. Bovendien kunnen we ons afvragen wat nu precies
primitief geweld behelst. Is geweld met een sterke fysieke component primitiever dan
geweld dat wordt uitgeoefend door middel van geweren en bommen? Balkan films met
expliciet fysiek geweld moeten niet opzij gezet worden als stereotype verbeeldingen, daar
het geweld vaak symbolisch gelaagd is.
De twee films tonen vooral de destructieve effecten van de oorlog. Ze hebben een duidelijk
anti‐oorlog thema en laten de lelijke en vernietigende kanten van de oorlog zien. Deze
vernietiging vindt plaats binnen een land, een samenleving, morele waarden, binnen
vriendschappen, nieuw gevormde groepen en uiteindelijk werkt de oorlog ook
zelfdestructief. Deze zelfdestructie vinden we als een rode draad terug in Balkan cinema.
De scriptie kijkt naar de fundamentele vragen en onderwerpen die deze films hebben
opgeworpen en onderzoekt hun textuele, contextuele en intertextuele verbanden. Deze
scriptie hoopt te laten zien dat het corpus van films over de Balkan oorlog in de jaren
negentig meer aandacht verdient. Bovendien toont de scriptie een mogelijke methode om
de films te onderzoeken.
79
Appendix II: PhD Proposal
1. Name of Candidate:
Laurike in ‘t Veld
2. Title of the Project:
‘Representing the (Extra‐) Ordinary: War and Genocide in Balkan and Rwanda Films’
3. Description of the Proposed Project:
a) Project Overview:
This project examines two corpora of fiction films on war and genocide; films about the
Balkan war, which occurred between 1991‐1995 and films about the Rwanda conflict, which
took place between 1990‐1994. These two corpora, consisting of 12 films in total, will be
analyzed in terms of their representation of good and bad; their differences and similarities,
for instance with regard to the role of the Western bystander and the Western media; and
their depiction of violence and genocide. It will take as its starting point a theoretical
approach from the field of Holocaust studies and the project then examines to what extent
this can be applied to the two other film corpora on genocide and war.
The project hypothesizes that there will be a difference in the represented opposition
between good and bad and it will link this difference to historical context as well as to a
Western view of these conflicts. The aim of this project is twofold; on the one hand the
project hopes to show similarities, pointing out elements that manifest themselves in both
of the corpora. On the other hand it wants to look for the differences in these two corpora,
try to explain these and thereby chart a way of viewing the two conflicts. By looking at
differences and similarities the projects hopes to design and point out generalizable
elements and interesting features which can be applied to other films dealing with war and
genocide. By outlining these two corpora this project aims to provide an entry into a more
systematic quantitative approach of representations of war and genocide. This quantitative
approach will be complemented by an extensive qualitative analysis of four of the films. The
qualitative analysis will take into account the data found within the quantitative research as
80
well as take a closer look at various filmic elements such as cinematography, framing, mise‐
en‐scène, visualization of violence, war and ethnic cleansing and other interesting thematic
elements that are being addressed in the films. In these last decades we have been bombarded with works on the representation of the
Holocaust. As Nicholas Mirzoeff states: ‘The Holocaust towers over the contemporary, which
seems morally insignificant by comparison and becomes invisible.64 The systematic genocide
and its representation in films, books, poetry and other art forms seems, at times, to be the
sole example of a researchable genocide, or at least the only genocide that is worthy of such
an extensive analysis. However, in order to state anything about representing war and
genocide in general, we will have to focus our attention on other examples of ethnic
cleansing; in the Balkans, Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia, Armenia, East‐Timor and Lithuania.
This project hopes to be a point of departure for a larger research into the subject of the
representation of genocide.
The central question of this project will be: How are war and genocide represented in films
about the Balkan war and in films about the Rwanda massacre? I have made the conscious choice to construct a rather general central question. This is
because I wanted my research question to encompass all of the various elements I will be
dealing with during my research. The sub questions pertain to the more specific issues in this
project:
‐ What are their differences/similarities?
‐ How are war and genocide represented in terms of good and bad?
‐ What can we infer from these films about the perspective (Western or local) on the conflict?
‐ What is shown and what is not shown and what does that tell us? b) Relevance:
I consider this project to be very relevant for two main reasons. 64
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. ‘Invisible again: Rwanda and representation after genocide’, African Arts (September
2005), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0438/is_3_38/ai_n16118531
81
On the one hand, and I already referred to it in the overview of the project, we need to
extend the field of Holocaust studies in order to encompass more contemporary genocides,
so that we can start constructing valuable and extensive research which will be dealing with
a wider range of (filmic) representations of war and genocide. I consider the work done in
the area of Holocaust representations to be immensely useful and helpful, which is why I will
be taking it as a starting point into my research. I do, however, want to stress the fact that
there is considerably less attention given to other genocides and their representations. We
cannot afford to overlook or ignore these representations when considering the amount of
valuable and interesting information they contain. Thinking of the bigger picture we might
be able to trace changes in representing genocide over time, as well as try to explain why
certain representations have similarities or differences. When we apply Holocaust
representation theories to contemporary genocides we will be able to see both the pitfalls in
these theories as well as the elements that need adjustment. We can then extend and
refocus the existing theories, bringing them up‐to‐date. In writing about the Rwandan genocide Helen M. Hintjes adequately summarizes the
process of comparing genocides by stating that ‘[...] parallels with other situations of mass
state murder are unavoidable. Such parallels are even desirable, if the aim is to identify the
particular dynamics of genocide in a particular case’.65 At the end she adds that ‘the
differences between the genocides of Armenia, Germany and Rwanda are many and
obvious. But so too are the parallels and these differences and parallels are worth
investigating in the future’.66 I firmly agree with Hintjes that it is by drawing parallels that we
can find both general and particular elements of a certain genocide. Hintjes is talking about
the historical context of the genocides, which is indeed very interesting. However, being a
media scholar means that I am more interested in the ways these historical contexts are
translated into film. Secondly, these two corpora will be able to tell us something about the different views of
the conflict, both Western and local. How do political considerations find their expression in
the representation of good and bad? How are geopolitics influencing the portrayal of the
65
Hintjes, Helen M. ‘Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda’. The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol.37,
No.2 (June 1999), pp. 241‐286: p.242
66
Hintjes 1999: p.282
82
wars? Interestingly, almost all of the Rwanda films have been directed non‐Rwandans while
a large amount of the Balkan films have, by contrast, been directed by people from the
region itself. Can we trace this difference in production back to the content of the films?
When talking about these differences we need to realize that these are fiction films. This
means that the films will probably (need to) adhere to certain filmic laws; creating emotional
alignment with the main characters, following a story line that will ‘entertain’ the audience
as well as provide closure in the end. How do these laws of fiction stand in relation to the
real‐life situation? How are these genocides translated to film and which elements are lost in
the process? How do the films make sure they keep the attention of their viewers? In other
words: the relevance of this project also lies in the charting of the different views of the
conflict and the politics that are always inherent in these views. Closely related to this is the
link between the actual events and the medium of film.
4. Theoretical Approach & Methodology My approach to this subject can be divided into six parts; (a) looking at the historical context
(b) drawing upon a theoretical approach from studies on Holocaust representation
(c) defining the main terms (d) constructing variables and values (e) quantitative results (f) qualitative analysis of four films.
a) Historical Context
In order to say anything meaningful about the two conflicts I will have to pay some attention
to their historical context and their local specificities. Both conflicts were civil wars between
two or more ethnic groups. Both conflicts connect back to a longer history of ethnic
disagreement and struggle. In the case of the Rwandan genocide there are several factors to
be taken into account, such as the legacy of colonial politics, the economic crisis in the 80s
which was followed by a political crisis, the role of the media (especially the radio) in inciting
the Bahutu masses and the detailed planning of the genocide by the regime in power. With
regard to the conflict in the Balkans it is important to pay attention to the breaking down of
Tito’s Yugoslavia, the role of myths in creating national identities, the various ethnic groups
83
in the multi‐ethnic countries and the role of the Serbs in the main conflict in Bosnia as well
as their role in the genocides that took place in, among other places, Vukovar and
Srebrenica. Again, the role of the media is crucial and needs to be included in this historical
analysis. My aim is to give a compact overview of both of the conflicts and the way they resulted in
genocide; their main players, the run‐up to the conflict, the specifics of the genocide and the
international response.
b) Drawing upon a Theoretical Approach from Studies on Holocaust Representation
I would like to take as a starting point two terms coined by Michael Rothberg in his book
Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. In this book Rothberg
formulates the concept of traumatic realism, which is, according to Rothberg, the best way
to represent a traumatic event like the Holocaust. In his introductory chapter, Rothberg
provides us with an outline of the current field of Holocaust studies. He states that there are
two approaches to the question of representing genocide; the realist and the anti‐realist
approach. The realist approach holds that the Holocaust is knowable and can be represented
into a familiar mimetic universe. It implies a conception of the everyday and the extreme
where the two terms are collapsed or situated on a continuum. Rothberg links the realist
approach to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the ‘banality of evil’ which suggest that evil is never
radical and does not possess demonic dimensions: ‘extremity here is not something that
breaks with the ordinary dimensions of the modern world but exists on a continuum with
it’.67 On the other side we find the anti‐realists, who believe that the Holocaust cannot be
captured by the traditional representational schemata, thus situating it as a unique event.
This is connected to an unbridgeable rupture between the everyday and the extreme.
Rothberg links this approach to Elie Wiesel and his defense of the Holocaust as a unique
event that cannot be represented visually: ‘[...] The Holocaust [is] the ultimate event, the
ultimate mystery, never to be comprehended or transmitted’.68 Rothberg then continues
with his concept of traumatic realism, which combines the two approaches and ‘[...]
67
Rothberg, Michael. Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000: p.4
68
Gold, Jack. ‘Escape From Sobibor: a film made for television depicting the mass escape from Sobibor
extermination camp’ in: Haggith, Toby, Joanna Newman eds. Holocaust and The Moving Image:
representations in film and television since 1933. New York: Wallflower Press, 2005: p.198
84
mediates between the realist and antirealist position and marks the necessity of considering
how the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of genocide intersect and coexist’.69 I would like to return to the question of traumatic realism later on in my project but take as
a starting point the division between the realist and anti‐realist approach. I will attempt to
trace these two terms in the two film corpora. In order to do so I need to operationalize the
two terms and I aim to do that by connecting them to notions of good and bad. With the
realist approach, the everyday and the extreme are placed on a continuum. The opposition
between good and bad is not crystal clear because any human being could move from one
pole to the other on the continuum. As Hannah Arendt already pointed out, evil is not
radical, and even ordinary ‘good’ people can at one point in time commit horrible crimes.
The anti‐realist approach on the other hand considers evil to be radical. There’s a rupture
between the everyday and the extreme and therefore a clear opposition between good and
bad.
I would like to rephrase this in a hypothesis concerning my film corpus: Films about the
Rwanda genocide will show a clearer opposition between good and bad than films about the
Balkan war
c) Defining the Main Terms
When looking at good and bad I will have to address the following question: what is it that
good and evil consists of? The field of ethics and morality is enormous and I must admit that
it is difficult to find works that are willing to talk concretely about good and bad behaviors or
actions. In addition, there is a distinction to be made between morality on the one hand, and
morality in war on the other. Certain actions might be considered evil in normal life but
permissible in times of war. If someone is killed on the street we would consider that an evil
action, but if an enemy is killed on the battle field, this might be considered a morally good
action. Some scholars wonder if war and morality can go together, others are convinced they
do. And then there’s the case of ethnic cleansing, which is targeted at innocent civilians.
Surely that can be considered as a form of evil? In his article on morality and war Michael
Walzer refers to the order made by Japanese Commander General Okamura who, during
69
Rothberg 2000: p.9
85
WWII, ordered his troops to attack the Communist guerillas in North‐China by stating: ‘Kill
all! Burn all! Destroy all!’.70 Walzer states that ‘any war that requires the methods of general
Okamura [...] is itself immoral, however exalted the purposes in the name of which it is being
fought’.71 General Okamura’s order reflects the mechanism of genocide, where one group,
often unarmed and unprepared, is attacked with all means necessary and with the intent to
wipe out everyone and everything.
A genocide convention was designed in 1948, defining what is/are considered to be (acts of)
genocide. However, this convention is not uncontroversial, as Frank Chalk and Kurt
Jonassohn show in The History and Sociology of Genocide. I will have to do further
explorations in the field of ethics, war and good and bad actions. Is it possible to construct a
list of typically good and typically bad behaviors/actions? Or is any form of behavior subject
to cultural and contextual relativism? And how does this translate to the filmic world? I
would however assume that in these films, any violent act targeted at unprepared and
unarmed civilians is very likely to be marked as evil, whereas those helping these people will
be marked as good. d) Constructing Variables and Values
Concerning my hypothesis on the opposition between good and bad I have constructed
three variables and various values:
Variable 1: ‐ name, ‐ director, ‐ genre, ‐ funding, ‐ shooting location, other.
Values:
‐ 100 Days, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs,…
‐ Nick Hughes, Terry George, Michael Caton‐Jones,…
‐ drama, action, war, …
‐ UK, USA, Germany, France,…
‐ Rwanda, Montenegro, Bosnia, …
70
Walzer, Michael. ‘Moral Judgment in Time of War’ in: Wasserstrom, Richard A ed. War and Morality.
Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1970: p.59
71
Walzer 1970: p.59
86
I have designed this variable to get an insight in the production values of these films. I take
one variable to encompass all of the aspects related to a film such as its name, its director
and its genre. As I already stated, it will be interesting to see who directed the film as that
might tell us something about the view portrayed, as well as the funding and the genre. Variable 2: Who is committing what crime?
Value 1: ‐ Bahutu/Batutsi/Batwa
‐ Bosnian Muslims/Bosnian Serbs/Bosnian
Croats/Serbs/Croatians/Albanians/Macedonians etc.
Value 2: stealing/ killing/ raping/ beating/ shooting/ torturing/ threatening/ psychic
violence/ other.
This variable will show us which ethnic groups are committing which crimes. I make the
assumption that the groups committing the crimes will be marked as bad, or at least as
engaging in bad behavior. Variable 3: The representation of violence
Value: visual/ non‐verbal sound/ verbal sound
This is a complex variable. First of all we need to decide what will count as a mode of
representation. In his article ‘Non‐verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist
framework: agendas for research’ Charles Forceville explains the difficulties of designing an
exhaustive list of available modes. However, ‘[...] this is no obstacle for postulating that
there are different modes and that these include, at least, the following: (1) pictorial signs;
(2) written signs; (3) spoken signs; (4) gestures; (5) sounds; (6) music; (7) smells; (8) taste; (9)
touch’.72 The question then is: which of these modes can convey an act of violence? It seems
clear that we can rule out smell (7), taste (8) and touch (9). We might read about an act of
72
Forceville, Charles. ‘Non‐verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: agendas for research’
in:Gitte Kristiansen, Michel Achard, René Dirven and Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza (eds), Applications of Cognitive
Linguistics: Foundations and Fields of Applications. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006: p.4
87
violence in a film (2) but this is not very likely. An act of violence can however be conveyed
visually (1), but also through sound (5) which subdivides into verbal and non‐verbal sound.
The mode of gesture is closely connected to the visual mode. When we see someone
committing a violent act, we also see the gesture accompanying that violent act. I will thus
choose not to make a separation between the two. I would also argue that music alone is
not capable of conveying an act of violence. Music can convey a certain atmosphere of
danger and disaster. It can set the tone of a violent scene but I would state that music in
itself, which is undoubtedly less explicit than other modes, cannot represent violence,
whereas an isolated visual or (non‐) verbal sound could. By designing this variable I want to be able to count any instance of explicit violence,
whether it be visually (we see someone committing a violent act), through sound (we hear
someone committing a violent act) or through speech (someone refers to a violent act). We
need to be aware of the fact that these modes frequently go together in representing a
violent act. When we see someone inflicting harm we often also hear the sounds
accompanying this violent act. However, at other times violence is conveyed through one
mode alone, like when we hear a gunshot but we do not see what is happening. I take all three modes to be explicit because they are dealing with the violent act itself. I am
not designing a scale of explicitness because I think this will jeopardize my interrater
reliability. I would rather have my raters count any shot, non‐verbal or verbal sound of a
violent act and consider them all as explicit. One could counter that sound or speech is less
explicit than a clear visual but I firmly disagree. Sounds and verbal representations can be
made extremely explicit and are therefore able to convey the horrors of the violent act. e) Quantitative Results
In the end we will be able to show how these films are constructed, with who committing
what crimes and how these crimes are transmitted. That will give us a clear indication of
who is marked as bad: are all the players involved in committing crimes or is it just one
group? And how are the violent acts represented on screen? Are they conveyed through
images, non‐verbal or verbal sound? Perhaps we will see that the violent acts of certain
88
groups are mostly conveyed through images and others through sound. Of course I will need
to analyze and interpret these results more thoroughly after I have collected the data.
f) Qualitative Analysis My qualitative analysis will extensively deal with various filmic elements. It will also show the
similarities in the role of the Western bystander and the international media and the way
this is constructed throughout the films.
5. Corpus
In the case of the Rwanda films I was constricted, as I could find only 6 fiction films. This
meant I had to find an equal amount of films about the Balkan war. I had compiled a list of
18 Balkan films and ordered these chronologically. I then picked every third on the list. These
are the films I will be dealing with:
Rwanda
‐ 100 Days (2001, Nick Hughes)
‐ Hotel Rwanda (2004, Terry George)
‐ Shooting Dogs (2005, Michael Caton‐Jones)
‐ Sometimes in April (2005, Raoul Peck)
‐ Un Dimanche à Kigali (2006, Robert Favreau)
‐ Shake Hands with the Devil (2007, Roger Spottiswoode)
Balkan
‐ Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)
‐ Savior (1998, Pedrag Antonijevic)
‐ Nebeska Udica (1999, Ljubisa Samardzic)
‐ No Man’s Land (2001, Danis Tanovic)
‐ La Vie est un Miracle (2004, Emir Kusturica)
‐ The Hunting Party (2007, Richard Shepard)
Interestingly, although both of the conflicts occurred in the early nineties, all the Rwanda
films have been made from 2001 and onwards. It will be necessary to speculate on why this
time gap exists. 89
6. Expected Results
I expect to find that in the Rwanda films the opposition between good Tutsi’s and bad Hutu’s
will be very clear, with maybe one or two exceptions, whereas in the Balkan films all ethnic
groups are committing violence and also doing good. If I am proven right, then this strong
opposition in the Rwanda films can be linked to both historical context as well as a typically
Western viewpoint which, having less interest in the region, tends to fall back on old
stereotypes, unwilling or unable to look for nuances. The Manichean opposition between
good and evil is still upheld by the Western directors, whereas the Balkan directors are
indeed looking for the nuances and the human face of evil. Fiction films need to include
protagonists that we as a viewer can identify with. The ‘outsider’ directors of the Rwanda
films tend to simplify the conflict, creating a classic binary struggle between good and evil
which will have a certain commercial appeal and will therefore bring in more money. The
viewers can comfortably sit back and identify with the good guys and rest assure that in the
end, justice will prevail. By contrast, the ‘insider’ Balkan directors will not want to violate the
complex reality in order to do good in the ratings. They want to look for a nuanced portrayal
of the different ethnic groups in a war‐time situation. This means we as an audience have
more work to do, as identification is made more problematic. 7. Provisional Chapter Arrangement
Introduction:
‐ general statements on the question of representing war and genocide
‐ introducing research question and various sub‐questions
‐ short introduction into theory and methodology
‐ relevance
‐ proposed structure of project
Chapter One: Historical Context of the Two Conflicts
‐ 1.1 Balkan War
‐ 1.2 Rwanda
‐ 1.3 UN
90
Chapter Two: Introducing Michael Rothberg and Operationalizing his Theory
‐ 2.1 Anti‐Realism/ Realism/ Traumatic Realism
‐ 2.2 Good/Bad: Morality and Behavior
‐ 2.3 Defining and Explaining Variables and Values
Chapter Three: Applying Variables to Corpus
‐ 3.1 Introduction of Corpus
‐3.2 Analyzing Rwanda Films
‐3.3 Analyzing Balkan Films
‐3.4 Preliminary Conclusions
Chapter Four: A Closer Look
4.1 Quantitative Analysis of two Rwanda Films
4.2 Quantitative Analysis of two Balkan films
Chapter Five: Connecting the Dots
5.1 Incorporating Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis 5.2 Comparison Findings: Differences and Similarities
5.3 Creating Framework for further Research
Conclusion
‐ answering research question and sub‐questions
‐ re‐evaluating relevance and applied methodology
‐ evaluating project
‐ motivation for further research
8. Literature
Chalk, Frank, Kurt Jonassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case
Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
91
Garner, Richard T., Bernard Rosen. Moral Philosophy: A Systematic Introduction to
Normative Ethics and Meta‐Ethics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.
Harrow, Kenneth. ‘“Un train peut en cacher un autre”: Narrating the Rwandan Genocide and
Hotel Rwanda’. Research in African Literatures, Vol.36, No.4 (Winter 2005) pp.223‐232.
Hintjes, Helen M. ‘Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda’. The Journal of Modern African
Studies, Vol.37, No.2 (June 1999), pp. 241‐286. Iordanova, Dina. Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and Media. London: BFI Publishing,
2001.
Iordanova, Dina. ‘Conceptualizing the Balkans in Film’. Slavic Review 55, No.4 (Winter 1996).
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. ‘Invisible again: Rwanda and representation after genocide’. African Arts
(September 2005), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0438/is_3_38/ai_n16118531
Rosenbaum, Alan S ed. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide.
Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.
Rothberg, Michael. Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Silber, Laura, Allan Little. The Death of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Wasserstrom, Richard A ed. War and Morality. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company,
1970.
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