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Any time an established Hollywood star makes a film, one inevitably walks into it with a certain amount of skepticism. For every Clint Eastwood, there’s at least a handful of folks like Tom Hanks, who either shamelessly serve up vanity projects or simply can’t detach their celebrity from their behind-the-camera efforts. It’s truly extraordinary, then, that Angelina Jolie’s feature debut, the Bosnian War epic “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” doesn’t show a trace of Tinseltown compromise, and it certainly doesn’t read like the brainchild of an A-List actress. But, then, Jolie has never been your typical A-Lister anyway.
She gained superstardom largely for her preternatural beauty and her megawatt love life, but Jolie hasn’t seemed preoccupied with being among the world’s most famous entertainers. She rose in the business with a flair for rebellion, and she followed that with a privilege-supported interest in humanitarian causes. Both proclivities converge to great effect in “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” a violent, angry, yet sensitive and artful film that Jolie both wrote and directed. Featuring a cast comprised of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, and released in the Balkan-region setting’s native language of Serbo-Croatian, the movie has virtually no concern for mass appeal. Awareness and indictment are its goals, along with its maker’s personal expression.
With the unflinching perspective of both a realist and a feminist, Jolie’s film homes in on the rape camps that were rampant during the Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing, which claimed the lives of thousands amid the 1990s conflict. A doomed love story between a Muslim artist (Zana Marjanovic) and a Serb officer (Goran Kostic) lends intimacy to the widespread destruction, and speaks to the innocence and possibility so often killed by war.
The movie’s unbridled violence is sure to turn off some, and its pessimistic views don’t make for a happy aftertaste. But Jolie wonderfully succeeds in presenting her feelings on the devastation that can escalate under a lack of foreign intervention, and her message movie skirts insipid preachiness with its blunt approach, native truths, visceral action and authorial revelations.
In the Land of Blood and Honey
R
Three-and-a-half reels out of four
Opens tomorrow at the Ritz at the Bourse
Recommended Rental
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
R
Now Available
In this creepy, crawly haunted house tale, little Sally (Bailee Madison) hears voices in the nooks and crannies of her father’s regal fixer-upper, and — you guessed it — the voices don’t just want to play beauty salon. Katie Holmes co-stars as Sally’s maternally-conflicted stepmom, who may just need to summon the powers of Scientology to save Sally’s soul from the film’s army of long-fingered rat-monkeys. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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