No Man's Land

2001 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In some place that I've never heard of, two groups of people I've never heard of are having a war for reasons that are unknown to me. A series of circumstances leaves three men trapped in the titular area between the two front lines. One of them, presumed dead, was placed on a bouncing mine as a booby trap for his soldiers who would eventually try to recover his body. U.N. peacekeepers in sky-blue hats arrive to help out, and the media shows up to do what the media usually does. And as expected, it's a satirical clusterfuck.

I'm going to go ahead and get the characters' names down because it's important that they have them. They're named Ciki, Nino, and Cera, and they're as important as Private Ryan or any other guy who makes war a little more personal for people sitting on couches or in theater seats or, as I prefer to watch movies, lying naked in the bathtub. No, media lady, not "every trench is the same." This, maybe doing it better than any movie since Dr. Strangelove, satirizes the absurdities of war. It's not as flat-out funny or as zany as Dr. Strangelove, but it delivers its message just as strongly. And it is very darkly funny, especially a few asides with a picture, some cigarettes, language barriers, a childish argument about who started the war, a middle finger apparently understood in every language, and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. At least the latter seemed funny to me. Of course, it's not all fun and games. There are also scenes of great tension and great sadness. I fell in love with a buzzing fly as the Sergonians are hunting for the Basnivavian guy, and dripping sweat from the German mine expert was a perfect little detail. And although you know exactly what's going to happen the Borgnesian Buddy Hackett who gets it near the beginning of the movie still manages to shock. I kind of expected almost all of this to take place in the trench, one of those one-setting deals that could have been written for the stage, and initially, I thought things were getting a little sloppy once the media got involved. But that was precisely the point, and the perfect storm of media meddling and "peacekeeper" ineptitude along with some soldiers who seem to know barely more than I do about the situation led to the tragically absurd denouement of No Man's Land. This is a horrifying look at human nature and how we just can't get along even when we do know some of the same chicks, and it's got an ending that will probably stay with me for a long, long time.

Note: This beat Amelie for Best Foreign Film in 19-whatever, but I'm not going to hold that against it like a Jaws fan would. I haven't had the time to fall in love with this like I have Amelie. And this might have been slightly more important than Amelie, especially looking at the countries that collaborated to produce the thing--Bosnia and Herzegovina (which seem like they might be made up), Slovenia (another made-up one?), France, Italy, UK, and Belgium (I've heard of those last four).

Cory recommended this one.