Excellent flick about the futility of hating the other, except...

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2002)

I watched this movie spellbound. Especially now, with the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine, this movie really resonated with me. I thought that most everything about this movie - from the acting, to the cinematography, to the direction, etc. - was uniformly excellent. The international kudos it has received are well-earned.
Now for the major flaw in this film, which makes it, in my mind, absolutely hypocritical. I can't believe I haven't heard this most-deserved criticism yet levelled against this film - IT IS HOMOPHOBIC. The film takes great pains to show both sides of the story and treat most of the characters fairly, based on race or ethnic origin or gender, etc. - but the whole plot starts due to the sadistic and evil action of the gay Serbian general, who SPOILERS places the body of the Bosnian soldier overtop the land mine so that it will explode. There are a few anti-Serbian slurs levelled by the Bosnian soldier for this action - but the only other Serbian character, the soldier stuck in the trench with him, is mostly a positive character and depicted as presumably heterosexual (in movies like this, if the character is not specifically denoted as gay, let's face it, he's straight.) I'm not saying that gay men, particularly those in the army, can't be capable of some terrible things - the problem here lies in the fact that this is a movie - and when you depict the only representative from a minority as despicably evil and sadistic, you are making a statement about the entire minority. A second gay character not depicted as such would negate the hatred of the first portrayal. But no such luck in this film - we are left to believe that hating others because they are different is bad, except if they're a trouble-making gay man who, thank God, already got what he deserved.
I've been thinking a lot about why the filmmakers decided to make this dead Serbian general gay - what point were they trying to make? Were they worried that some Serbians might object to a heterosexual Serbian general doing something as terrible as placing a body over a land mine to do nothing except kill some more? Did they think by making this general gay they would therefore eliminate any guilt felt by other Serbs, who would assume, "well, he was a faggot so that's why he did this despicable thing, not because he's Serbian." You can bet a million dollars that's why the writers WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY to make sure we knew the general was gay. This is offensive and this film deserves to be attacked for its hypocrisy. This one major homophobic attack in this film completely ruined what should have been a fulfilling experience for me.
Heterosexual male filmmakers have been doing this for years - whether in prison movies, or Nazi movies, or anywhere - eliminate heterosexual male guilt by making the chief antagonist gay - don't bother making the character a fully-rounded individual - just make him gay and this will be enough proof of why he's so despicable. This tendency of using the gay villain has, thankfully, abated in North American cinema. Unfortunately not in Bosnia.