No Man's Land

No Man’s Land (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)

2001 / Bosnia / 98 minutes

“You can’t do nothing facing murder. Doing nothing to stop it is taking sides.”

Director: Danis Tanovic / Screenplay: Danis Tanovic / Director of Photography: Walther van den Ende / Music: Danis Tanovic / Production: Marc Baschet, Frederique Dumas-Zajdela and Cedomir Kolar for Fabrica Cinema / Cast: Branko Djuric (Ciki), Rene Bitorajac (Nino), Filip Jovanovich (Cera), Georges Siatidis (Marchand), Serge-Henri Valcke (Dubois), Sacha Kremer (Michel), Alain Eloy (Pierre), Simon Callow (Soft), Katrin Cartlidge (Jane), Tanja Ribic (Martha), Branko Zavrsan (Deminer).

In the midst of the Bosnian War in 1993, two soldiers- the experienced Bosnian Ciki (Branko Djuric) and the newly recruited Serbian Nino (Rene Bitorajac), find themselves stranded together in an abandoned trench between the lines of their respective sides. A third soldier, wounded Bosnian Cera (Filip Jovanovich), is stuck in the trench with them and unable to move from the landmine he’s laying on, which would cause it to immediately go off.

   Throughout the first half of Danis Tanovic’s surprisingly funny, still devastatingly tragic and always brilliant feature debut, Ciki and Nino struggle for the upper hand- both physically and morally. They argue over who started the bloodily violent and utterly pointless war that destroyed both their hometowns and each of them temporarily gains power over the other at various points by grabbing discarded weapons that they find laying around.

   Ultimately though, they’re as stuck with each other as they are with the war and eventually find some common ground (they know a lot of the same people and places and amusingly even discover they have an old girlfriend in common too). But it’s not enough to change the fact that they’re fighting for opposite sides. “Why get acquainted to watch each other through sights?” as Nino asks at one point.

   In the second half of the film, the Bosnian and Serbian soldiers stationed on either side of the trench realise that the men stranded between the lines are from opposing sides and call in the UN observers to resolve the situation. It’s then that the pompously useless British Colonel Soft (Simon Callow in an almost Basil Fawlty- esque farcical part) and the idealistic French Sergeant Marchand (Georges Siatidis) get involved, with things further complicated by the arrival of a television news camera crew.

   When it becomes clear that the (EU- manufactured) mine cannot be defused and that Cera is certainly doomed, Marchand remains determined to rescue Ciki and Nino, despite Soft’s preference for doing nothing and the fact that the two stranded men have by this point turned on one another again because of having to leave Cera behind.

   A perfectly executed anti- war parable, No Man’s Land won the Best Foreign Language Film award at the 2002 Oscars and remains one of cinema’s best and most memorable examinations of both the horror and the complete futility of a then still very recent conflict.

   Whilst most of the comedic moments come from the sheer ludicrousness of the situation with the men trapped in the trench, the entire war is exposed for the needless waste of life it was. The ridiculous state of things is best summed up by the UN “Referees” as they try to organise a temporary ceasefire, with the only common language being the one shared by the two opposing sides.

    Marchand emerges as the closest thing No Man’s Land has to a hero but even he is only able to do what little he can because of the opportunity for independent action presented by his superiors (who- like Soft- would have just ignored the incident) being away at a conference.

   In the end, even Marchand is forced to agree to a cynical cover-up of the episode to save face for all involved (the UN inform both the Bosnian and Serb positions that the other side plans to take the trench so that it- and all the evidence- will be immediately destroyed).

   Despite all of the hugely frustrating moments of humour and hope that occur throughout, this is a film that was never going to have a happy ending. Ciki and Nino’s arguments about the origins of the war end up completely irrelevant (“Who cares who started it?” Cera asks, “We’re all in the same shit now”) and Marchand’s arse- covering bosses ensure that everything will be swiftly forgotten so that the “Normal” business of killing can continue the next day.

   To add a more positive postscript though, No Man’s Land almost immediately became hugely popular in the region the conflict had so recently been fought in (I first saw it on a pirated disc smuggled out of Kosovo, long since replaced with a more reliable official copy) and has been recognised by both Bosnian and Serbian veterans as one of the definitive statements on the whole sorry affair.