Given Hollywood’s relative historic disregard for the Bosnian war, Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut was always going to pique the interests of ethnic groups in the Balkan region and critics alike.
In the Land of Blood and Honey is a drama set against the bloody backdrop of 1990s ex-Yugoslavia. The Golden Globe-nominated project charts the ambiguous relationship between Ajla (Zana Marjanović), a Bosniak painter, and Danijel (Goran Kostić), a Serb soldier. It follows them from their pre-war date in a nightclub to the horrific rape camps of Bosnia-Herzegovina and, ultimately, to the confined military quarters where Danijel variously protects and imprisons his lover/enemy.
Jolie, who wrote, directed and co-produced the feature, set herself a momentous challenge. The region still has a long way to go in resolving the ugly tensions which sparked the Bosnian war following the collapse of Tito-led Yugoslavia; today, ethnic groups live side by side in what the film describes as “an uneasy peace”.
It is unsurprising, then, that even before its December 23 US release, the project attracted both the ire of Bosnian Muslims – when local media erroneously reported an on-screen love narrative between a Bosniak rape victim and her Serbian attacker – and criticism from Serbian groups incensed by the film’s alleged one-sided account of the conflict.
Thankfully, Jolie has risen to the challenge with sensitivity. The film is shot in Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles, its representation of the bullet-ridden Sarajevo cityscape shows attention to detail — despite filming taking place largely in Hungary — and the actors are local to the region. Jolie’s interest in respectful accuracy precludes her film from obtaining the “vanity project” status feared by some.
Indeed, she obviously intends the project as a Hotel Rwanda-esque exercise in global awareness-raising; as she recalled in one interview: “I wanted people to sit for two hours and think, please stop this conflict. Because that’s us screaming in our hearts to the international community – please stop this.”
Although this goal unsubtly finds expression in several gratuitous monologues and broadcast announcements throughout, it remains laudable, given the relative lack of widespread comprehension of the conflict’s complexities. Indeed, the feature proves commendable in its focus on the mass abuse of women that first saw rape recognised as a war crime by the international justice system.
Unfortunately, Jolie’s decision to engage the protagonists in an admittedly indistinct “romance” is unrealistic at best and flatly offensive at worst. Danijel intimidates Ajla with weapons and sporadically controls her with violence, even initiating an apparent attempt to rape her; the narrative’s attempt to explain away his outbursts as inevitable consequences of family pressure leaves too many questions unanswered.
While the feature thankfully stops short of directly eroticising the relationship’s abusive undertones, the inclusion of soft-focus sex scenes and an manipulatively sentimental soundtrack- particularly in combination with Danijel’s lament, “if only [Ajla] had been born a Serb” — occasionally hint at an unsettling attempt at an amorous Montague-and-Capulet-style narrative.
The film’s grisly ending provides a degree of much-needed clarity on the protagonists’ motivations in pursuing the relationship. Danijel’s repentant surrender in the final frame, however, may be read as a partial directorial exoneration of the character — a conclusion that will disappoint some.
The UK release date for In The Land of Blood and Honey is yet to be confirmed.
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