Bold Satire of War

Rating: 9/10 (30 October 2010)

"Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral." This quote sounds good and contains a very impressive statement about the crime of inaction. As I watched the movie many years ago for the first time, this quote was my favourite and I was fascinated by the movie's strong critical stance against the Western world watching people killed on TV, as if it was a reality show. More or less the same approach was on another civil war themed movie, Hotel Rwanda (2004), where again peace forces were nothing but an incapacitated group of tourists serving only to visual aesthetics in their colourful uniforms. Having watched No Man's Land for a second time, I have different feelings about it. The course of events is actually in its natural civil war conditions: People speaking the same language kill each other and all are convinced that they defend their fatherlands, until a French officer, who questions himself about the goals, purposes and responsibilities of his military mission, violates his authority and with some luck finds himself in a disillusion of being able to intervene, make decisions and save lives as a neutral side, meaning on neither side but on the side of humanity. In the eyes of the audience this officer with only good intentions throughout his actions, even when he disobeys his commander, is a hero. The character Jane Livingstone appears also to be such a hero using her camera instead of a weapon, whose statement on news channel summarizes the critical approach of the movie towards inaction. But later on even this sympathetic, charming woman hero turns out to be one of those greedy press members insulting his cameraman by telling him not to think or saying that a trench is just a trench. On the other hand the "evil guys", like the captain threatening the press members with confiscating their yellow cards or the colonel, who only sits back at his office and flirting with his "secretary", become the wiser ones with the unexpected and tragic final. Of course one cannot deactivate a quality trap mine, made in EU, because the EU produces only good stuff, which gives it the right to have a say in other countries with its military presence, whose members at the end of the day only get shocked by the madness of the "maniac Balkan people", who even don't know how to speak French. The tragic end didn't make me happy and when I first saw the movie I had really hopes for Cera when Chiki told him he'll die of cancer. But the tragedy is reality and it is good that Tanović didn't try to avoid it. The war itself was a choice and the mine was only produced to kill people right at the beginning. Saying "I'm neutral" in this case should be translated as "it is not personal". The bomb is not produced to kill Cera but anyone, so it is not personal and in the eyes of the war persons are not really worth, contrary to what the French officer thought at the beginning. I'm sure if the movie continued we would see him back in his hut and learned not to question things anymore, because a soldier's duty is to do what is said, not to think, just like Livingstone's cameraman. Both have to shoot when it is ordered.