IN the Land of Bal/Honey and Kan/Blood

Rating: 10/10 (21 February 2012)

During the Bosnian genocide the German newspaper DIE ZEIT reported of raped Bosnian women. And mentioned in a small notice some pages ahead: a child slowly cooked to death in a kettle. A child: for me the emblematic symbol for these and all the other 'bal-kan-years'. A Bosnian woman shared with Ms Jolie her experience. This transformed to a love story - changed to a script for a movie, co-producing with own money and shot in 42 days with a cast of real life survivors from the former Yugoslavia. Them remembering the 'forgotten' trauma (updating Ms Jolies script, one of the nine UNHCR:s goodwill ambassadors). Normals in not normal situations: ethics vs ethnics ... Some do it. Other see it. Awaylooking. The Muslim painter Ajla and the Christian Serbian police Daniel are more than 'Stockholm Syndrome' victims. Details of an evil environment, staging violence for the nothing-doing-audience. In the center the mid-level commander for an internment camp for women and son of a Serbian general, caught by his own history. It started 1992, four months ago: the painter Ajla, working on a picture and babysitting her sisters baby, leaving for an evening at a local nightclub. Encounters Danijel. Then the bomb: and their flirt and to-be-love explodes. The roundup by Serbs, killing the men and taking the women to the internment camp; in charge the Christian Serbian police Danijel. Discovers Ajla among the woman, taking care of her as secret protector, encouraging to escape. Ajla reunites with her sister, part of the rebel forces, planing a counterattack. Captured again. Again protected by Danijel. Escape. And her part as double agent. A lesson what love is when love does not reach beyond the lovers whisper: "It's a shame you weren't born a Serb." Their relation is a The Nightporter relation: do anything to survive and wait for the moment of freedom. The side effect of the movie was plain therapy: light-focused the suppressed trauma: go beyond and stop pretending that the past is past and we go on as usual. In the DER SPIEGEL interview Ms Jolie tells that the movie was screened in Washingtons Holocaust Museum: "Actually we should know everything so much better since a long time back" (2012/6:106). And at the 12 6 11 press conference the question of what a good soldier is: changed by Ermin Bravo: it is more the question of a good and bad man. And the DER SPIEGEL interview asks Ms Jolie what kind of woman she wants to be? "What I want to be? A 'great' mother." (2012/6:106) For this she needs a great father, Ermin Bravos good man. In lacanian terms of No'm du Père (Les non – dupes erent, Seminar 1973/74 march 19): The fathers name exists on the level of speech, unable to authorize himself to speak. It is the (M)other that authorizes him to speak. For this is needed trust. Ajla sees Danijels weakness. He is afraid of his dominant Serbian father, a general. It is this the reason why the movie ends as it ends. She can't trust him. And let him speak. A boy in the soldiers garment of a man. She knows for sure that he has not the courage to stop his father and the soldiers idea of the cooking-of-a-child-to-death. Ms Jolie highlights with her script and movie the Bosnian War trauma. But could have chosen another trauma among the variety of many. It is 1: the question of unwanted vs wanted. The unwanted displaced born wrong among us: Black, Jew, Gay, Gypsy, Disabled and so on and so on. It is 2: the question of the movie is not so much guilt but: SHAME. A taboo forbidden to discuss on stage. Ms Jolies country by birth knew and acted late. As others did, do and will do. Her aim is simple and difficult: highlight shame. Focus what all know but look away. It is easy to lawsuit a crime of guilt. But lawsuit shame, how? Having seen Jews clean the street of Nazislogans, supervised by the SS and looked at by passing, looking, looking away people. Or smelling the gassed and burned disabled at Hadamar: but looking away then and today. Ashamed. This the reason, why the movie is discussed as it is. The line of taboo is crossed: "But I would do anything for children. Who wouldn't?" Said by a woman with the wish to be a good mother. The movie, scripted and made for a woman by a woman with women and of course for them who avoid the movie. Occasionally it will be screened at human right gatherings. To show the lack of courage: "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence (E Nemert, Sweden, calls it coward) over that by the good people." Martin Luther King.