Drama. R. 2 hours, 6 minutes. At the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax
Writer-director Angelina Jolie’s first narrative feature, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” is a mix of the powerful and the ridiculous, and eventually the ridiculous wins.
The movie deals with a big subject that has received scant treatment in movies — the genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s — giving voice and testimony to what happened there. But the ill-conceived fictional elements take the picture right off the rails.
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is at its considerable best when putting a human face to historical atrocities. It shows what it was like for people to be thrown out of their homes and put into camps. The raping of women, the murder of babies, the lack of water and food, the daily and unrelenting terror of sniper fire — all these are rendered with brutal effectiveness.
Yet if such moments demonstrate why Angelina Jolie maybe really should be directing movies, the rest of “In the Land of Blood and Honey” suggests why she should think twice about writing them.
Jolie gives us the Bosnian war as told through the story of Ajla, a Muslim woman, and Danijel, a captain in the Serbian army. At an early stage of their romance, they go on a date and while dancing in a nightclub, the nightclub blows up. Later, she finds herself in an internment camp, where he is one of the presiding officers. He takes an interest in her safety, but he can only protect her so much.
Jolie could have chosen from a number of strategies — a movie about how war corrupts love. Or how love transcends war. Or how two people change as a result of unbearable stress and pressure. But none of these are possible, because the relationship between Danijel and Ajla is not much to begin with.
Danijel is an empty shell, fairly powerless and without strong political or romantic convictions, and hardly seems like a man at all. This is a problem, because if Danijel is never much of a man, and the connection between him and Ajla is superficial, then why lift out these two people as emblematic of the larger conflict?
Ultimately, Jolie seems to have in mind turning “In the Land of Blood and Honey” into “The Last Tango in Paris” of war movies. Danijel installs Ajla in a room and shows up daily, either to make love to her or argue with her, to comfort her or to rape her. It all depends on his mood. The psychology becomes too muddled to take seriously. Gradually, the awful thought begins to dawn that Jolie might actually see this setup as erotic.
With that, a movie that started out so earnestly begins to seem like something Madonna might have made.
