![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
entre deux frontiers
Aug. 1st, 2007 11:33 amMe working, laptop's eye view:
Last night we went for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toneyvr's birfday dinner (who's the fittest of all my friends despite nearing *gasp* retirement age) to Parkside (recommended by that_dang_otter). A lovely meal on one of Vancouver's few gardened patios. But I am in writing mode and writing derails my attachment to the human species to some extent. So en route home I picked up a DVD to spare querrelle my charm and wit--and to spare myself the challenge of trying to suss out how to express empathy when disconnected. Not a perfect solution, but a reasonable one.
The film was No Man's Land (2001), which is perhaps best known for beating Amélie for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2002. And while Amélie was charmante, the better film won. Like many brilliant films NML takes a simple, ostensibly implausible set-up to unpack an over-arching social dynamic.
Set in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1993, it's the story of 3 soldiers: 2 Bosniak ("Muslim"), one Serbian. They end up in a trench between each's army's battleline: to move towards one line would guarantee being shot by the other. Another Serb solidier has booby-trapped one of the Bosniaks (thinking him already dead)--to move him would detonate a mine. Eventually the UN's "peacekeepers" and the Western media become involved. Through the script Danis Tanovic touches upon the roots of the conflict, the tensions between conflicting histories, the apathy of the rest of the world to get involved, and the role media plays--good and bad--in how war is constructed in this day and age.
Tanovic also directed this, his first feature film. It was the screenplay award at Cannes, the aforementioned Oscar, and dozens of other critics and festivals prizes.
Last night we went for
toneyvr's birfday dinner (who's the fittest of all my friends despite nearing *gasp* retirement age) to Parkside (recommended by that_dang_otter). A lovely meal on one of Vancouver's few gardened patios. But I am in writing mode and writing derails my attachment to the human species to some extent. So en route home I picked up a DVD to spare querrelle my charm and wit--and to spare myself the challenge of trying to suss out how to express empathy when disconnected. Not a perfect solution, but a reasonable one.The film was No Man's Land (2001), which is perhaps best known for beating Amélie for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2002. And while Amélie was charmante, the better film won. Like many brilliant films NML takes a simple, ostensibly implausible set-up to unpack an over-arching social dynamic.
Set in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1993, it's the story of 3 soldiers: 2 Bosniak ("Muslim"), one Serbian. They end up in a trench between each's army's battleline: to move towards one line would guarantee being shot by the other. Another Serb solidier has booby-trapped one of the Bosniaks (thinking him already dead)--to move him would detonate a mine. Eventually the UN's "peacekeepers" and the Western media become involved. Through the script Danis Tanovic touches upon the roots of the conflict, the tensions between conflicting histories, the apathy of the rest of the world to get involved, and the role media plays--good and bad--in how war is constructed in this day and age.
Tanovic also directed this, his first feature film. It was the screenplay award at Cannes, the aforementioned Oscar, and dozens of other critics and festivals prizes.
