Men with guns, boys with toys

No Man's Land - R\nStarring: Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac\nDirected by: Danis Tanovic\nShowing: Showplace East 11\nDanis Tanovic's debut film, "No Man's Land," has been critically acclaimed, collecting a large list of award nominations and wins, and rightly so. Winning for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and Best Screenplay at Cannes. Tanovic wrote and directed the film, along with composing and singing some of the music for the soundtrack. Tanovic becomes one more director in the ever-growing field of multi-hyphenated, multi-talented individuals who seem to bring a Midas touch to every aspect of film they deal with.\nSet against the bitter civil wars of the former Yugoslavia, Tanovic brings a stark realism to the film that comes from his experience as a documentary filmmaker on the front lines with the Bosnian army. Tanovic's humor is scathing and black with such quips as one Serbian soldier shaking his head and scoffing, "It's such a mess in Rwanda!" The story surrounds a Bosnian soldier and a Serbian soldier trapped in a trench between opposing front lines, thus the title. There is also another Bosnian soldier in the trench who is booby-trapped with a ball-bearing mine. With only one gun between them, the boys-with-toys metaphor is strong as they each force one another to do things and admit that their side started the war "because I have a gun and you don't!" But with each passing moment, the comedy crawls away and gives itself over to an absurdism that is closer to the truth. By the end, things are seething, hatreds must be avenged and there are no heroes, only the dead and those left dying.\nWhile Tanovic's anger is felt throughout the film, it never gets in the way of the humor, nor the realism, but instead weaves it together into a potent film with a sucker-punch. By the end, Tanovic is not only commenting on the pointlessness of his own country's war, but on war itself, the pretentiousness of United Nations humanitarian aid and the self-serving media of warfare. Not only is Tanovic working close to home, but so are his crew and actors. This authenticity bleeds right across the film.\n

\n\n