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A battle leaves two men alive, a Bosnian named Chiki (Branko Djuric—Time of the Gypsies) and Nino (Rene Bitorajac), a Serb. Believing a Bosnian soldier to be dead, Nino's partner plants a mine underneath him so that when he's moved everyone will be blown up. Enraged at his friend's death and this final indignity, Chiki kills him. However, when Chiki finds out his buddy is still alive, the task of saving him becomes the film's principle quagmire. Marchand (Georges Siatidis), a French soldier who is tired of doing nothing, decides to try and help, while back at the at the UN High Command in Zagreb, Colonel Soft (Simon Callow) decides it's easier to bang his secretary and leave this as another unsolvable Eastern European savagery. Since Marchand knows how the game is played, he enlists the media a la Three Kings and forces the U.N. to act or face embarrassment. Tanovic has compared this film to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In this case Godot does finally show up—as the United Nations Protective Forces. However, they prove to be totally ineffectual. In fact, rather than provide analysis of the war, Tanovic directs his attack towards an international community that stood by and watched rather than assist. While the media circus unfolds and the U.N. plans its inactivity, Nino and Chiki get to know each other between trying to kill one another. In one peaceful moment, they find they both knew the same girl. When Nino shares that she went abroad and Chiki remarks that she's better off the audience gets the impression that these two could be having coffee somewhere together if they weren't at war. The attention paid to little details is the strength of this film. What kind of a war is it when one soldier is wearing ratty sneakers and a Rolling Stones t-shirt while another has access to mines? Bosnian humor is strong and black like coffee, and this film doesn't lack caffeine. The exchanges between Chiki and Nino are often hilarious and their debates about who started the war are both beside the point and of utmost importance. As one soldier laments the massacres in Rwanda, the poignancy does not go unnoticed. When the U.N. finally arrives, they're greeted with the comment "The smurfs are here!" (both for their blue uniforms and basic uselessness). In another scene, a Bosnian child drives a U.N. soldier crazy by playing the accordion until he's given a pack of cigarettes. The chaos of so many nations unable to work together is also comic. The English don't trust the French, the Bosnians speak no English, and the Germans are always on time. Tanovic plays off the absurdity of this war in his choices for roles as well: Croatians play Serbs, Bosnians play Montenegrins, Slovenians play Germans, etc. Regardless of whom they play, the acting is very good. Branko Djuric is sort of a cross between Al Pacino and Serge Gainsbourg and brings soul to the film. The always excellent Katrin Cartlidge (Breaking the Waves, Before the Rain) plays an English journalist with the expected tenacity, while Rene Bitorajac plays a naïve but angry soldier very well. A war movie totally opposite of the usual American bang bang fare, No Man's Land bespeaks the absurdity and futility of war and leaves us with the haunting image of a man trapped on a live mine. Many important films dealing with the war have come out of this region, including Pretty Village Pretty Flame, Underground, Cabaret Balkan, Savior, Broken English, and Welcome to Sarajevo. No Man's Land is obviously specific to the region though its theme of the need to act is also universal. As an aside, while watching this film at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, and as a first generation American, it was evident in the theater that there were people from all over the former Yugoslavia, all sharing space, all laughing at the same jokes whose essence the subtitles couldn't capture. It was a surreal experience, considering the end of the film. Absurd indeed.
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