"During the Bosnian war, two soldiers - a Bosnian and a Serb - find themselves pinned down in a trench, while a wounded grunt lies prone one a land mine that could blow them all to smithereens."
This is what the Netflix sleeve, that the DVD came in, read. As I went ahead and played the film, I just kept thinking what could be in store for the next hour and 38 minutes, and more importantly, what's so special about this war story that took this film to Oscar glory back in '01 beating our very own 'Lagaan' in the process! :D
- Happiness... due to the surprisingly great amount of humor in an otherwise seriously-titled war movie!
- Sadness... well, because it was a war movie!
- Contentment... because it was a brilliant movie!
- Disappointment... because I was just too late catching up with this movie in spite of knowing it released in 2001!
The plot of this movie is, in my opinion, a figment of the wildest imagination. Two soldiers from opposing camps are trapped in no man's land, with neither wanting to get rid of the other! Add to this the complexity of another soldier lying on a land mine! How the UNPROFOR comes to the rescue of these three individuals and how the perpetually self-centered Press covers the entire episode forms the rest of the movie.
The film openly endorses the fact that War is never started by the men who are actually in it. Struggle for power has always led man to wage wars; but alas, the guy in the front line is just a normal man at the end of the day, yearning to get back to his family, confused as to why he's doing what he's doing. The protagonists in this movie, Ciki & Nino, pretty much extend from the same theory; they initially accuse each other and their respective nations for having started the war but towards the end prove that they are just normal individuals; they eventually discover common interests and also work towards getting each other safely out of the trench! However, events take unexpected turns; I will let you watch the movie to figure it out!
As I mentioned above, the film is laced with humor throughout, but never forced upon any of the scenes. This aspect was a huge surprise for me, and a pleasant one at that. The opening scene provides a couple of guffaws, sure, but the biggest surprise was how well the laughs continue till almost the end in spite of all the seriousness the onscreen events were supposed to generate! Shockingly, but not surprisingly enough, the whole segment of Ciki and Nino going, "You listen to me... because I have the gun and you don't" in turns, has been blatantly lifted by Trivikram Srinivas for the movie 'Jalsa' starring Pawan Kalyan and Prakash Raj. What a shame! When will these guys ever come up with something original?!
Getting back to this movie, most of the film-making aspects were just top class! Be it direction, cinematography or screenplay. Except for a couple of instances where one might notice flaws with continuity, every scene has been etched with reality and passion. The whole story spans for just a period of a few hours. Kudos to the entire team for maintaining the look and feel of both the film and it's characters throughout the film making process which might have taken days, who knows?! No wonder this film won an Oscar!
This is the second film that I have watched in a row which had no background score, the other one being 'The Piano Teacher'. Again, not one scene lacked in intensity or depth just like the former. At one point, there was this trance number that started playing out of the blue! I, in fact, paused the movie on my computer to check if any of the open web pages was the culprit; but no, the track stopped with the movie! It turned out to be the music player of one of the characters onscreen, probably bored with the proceedings! But trust me, the movie was never boring! Not for one bit!
Writer/Director Danis Tanovic has brilliantly used this film to remind us all that even the worst situations in life can provide a chuckle or two. It is just up to us to realize that and conjure up that smile... :)
A must watch!
2 comments:
Must watch! ill watch, but one thing i guess and feel from this is, most of the classic/world movies has minimal/least possible background score only..it doesn't mean no background score, it means an appropriate background score!!
Hey PRC... you are probably right! But the thing is there are many world class movies that do have background music to a decent extent - Cinema Paradiso, The 400 blows, for instance.
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