Pretty Village, Pretty Flame - Essay Example

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 War Its Causes and Manipulations As Seen Through the Film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame 4 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction Reel world or moving pictures popularly known as cinema as well has always reflected life at a larger scale. However, when life of man got gradually shattered by the blow of wars specially the two great World Wars, the trend of cinema gradually deviated to a de-glorification of war and more realistic appeal towards life started getting displayed on the silver screen. War became a very poignant topic for cinema during post World War II era and the years in which every nation of the world passed under the threat of war during cold war era. James Chapman in his epoch making book, “War and Film” mentions in the Introduction section, “It seems to me that film about war have generally fallen, into one or more categories, and these categories have, in turn, given rise to lineages, taxonomies or modes that can be mapped across different national cinemas” (Chapman, 2008). The effect of war on the creative minds across the globe was so stark that the directors of the twenty-first century could not come out of the trauma and social devastation caused by the outbreak of war. In the year 1996, Yugoslavian director Srdan Dragojecvic made a film bearing the title ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ that yielded a bizarre but unique and unwelcoming dark humour regarding the events and manipulation that evolved and continued Bosnian war. The film is considered as one of the finest modern classics of Serbian cinema and the plot of the film is motivated by the real life circumstances that occurred during the initial days of Bosnian war. The story of the film centres round a group of Serbian soldiers who got trapped inside the tunnel and were entrapped by a fragment of the Bosnian troop. These soldiers interestingly did not join the war out of any sense of patriotism or extreme nationalism. The screenplay of the film ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ is based on a magazine article that was published in “Duga” authored by Vanja Bulic. Through a series of flashbacks, the film represents the early life of every soldier trapped inside the tunnel and endeavours to give an impression about the facts that culminated into a wartime situation and myriad manipulations that took place to continue it. War Its Causes and Manipulations As Seen Through the Film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ presents a plot that centres round a long-nurtured friendship of Halil who is a Muslim and Milan a Serbian. Set in the backdrop of 1980s, these two boys spend their boyhood playing and spending a considerable time from their playful days near a tunnel which they found mostly abandoned. Extremely inquisitive by nature, both the boys had planned a number of times to intrude through the unknown darkness of the tunnel but at the end, were defied by the myth that eclipsed their minds like most of the other boys in and around the village of being eaten by ogre who dares to navigate through the tunnel. The next shift of the film takes its audiences directly into the year 1992 where there is a sudden and recent outbreak of war between the Muslims and Serbians which force the boys to turn into foes from bosom friends (Smucker, 1997). Amid all the violence that flickered and ignited the village of Halil and Milan, the friends become prey in the hands of wartime situations to turn into violent enemies; the Serbian soldiers capture a beautiful American journalist. At the outset of the film itself, a shot is being captured where the smiling faces of European and American dignitaries are found to inaugurate the Brotherhood and Unity Tunnel that is going to form a linkage between Zagreb and Belgrade. Ironically, when the film proceeds, this symbol of brotherhood in the film will turn into a dungeon of hatred and death when the Muslims will get trapped by Serbian soldiers within the tunnel and they have no way but to patiently wait for the death. And while waiting for the death, the soldiers trapped within arrange circus act to entertain themselves, which is quite symbolic in nature. To understand the dark humour and the subtle representation of the anti-war messages imbibed within the plot of the film, it is necessary to gaze the film beyond its mundane representation. There are scenes in the film where each of the dignitaries cutting the ribbon cuts themselves instead frames, is the clever tone of the film and the reason behind its witty title as well. Shlomo Schwartzberg a film critic writes, “The long-running, bloody Bosnian conflict is the backdrop for this forceful anti-war drama, which opens and closes with newsreel footage of politicians dedicating monuments to friendship among Yugoslavias various factions” (University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, 1999). In order to get hold of the anti-war messages and causes of war that has been subtly expressed through the film, “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ which almost stands for a literal connotation of the following words ‘beautiful villages burn beautifully’, one must try to understand the backdrop of the film to comprehend its anti-war intent. The anti-war theme of the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” is deliberately manifested through dark humour by the director to appeal the audience in a prolific way. Moreover, it is a mechanism which was often used in (post) Yugoslav film making. Sumantra Bose in his book, “Bosnia After Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention” mentions, “The movie uses technique typical of (post) Yugoslav filmmaking, particularly black humour and tragicomic sequences with distinct surrealist edge, so effective in such films as Serbian director Srdjan Dragojevic’s remarkable rumination on Bosnian war, “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” (Bose, 2002). The tragicomedy is subtly injected into the plot of the film so that a perfect tittering to the political motif behind every outbreak of war can be clearly hinted and without pondering into any particular political dissent in the film. The oscillation of the time frame presented in the movie is also done intentionally to give the audience a complete feeling of the situations that culminate into war. At the same time, the transition of relations, situations and feelings that takes place at the outbreak of the war where neighbours and friends turn into stark enemies. The wide panorama of life and the changes which take place before and after the war help a common man watching the movie to comprehend the causes of war and the manipulation which keeps the war sustaining very clearly. The plot of the film or the time frame, against which the plot is set, moves to and fro almost like an oscillating pendulum. The time frame of the film starts in the year 1971 and ends with an Epilogue set against 1999. The rich metaphors in the film provide a strong anti-war message. It is through these metaphors, that the cause of war shown with great subtlety is reflected. The film ends with a scene which is set apart from the main narrative of the film projecting a scene where young Milan and Halil enter the tunnel packed with dead bodies to find that two of the bodies are their own during 1980s and 1990s. They comprehend that it was their ill fate and the dark predicament which got sealed within the unexplored and unseen dark abbeys of the tunnel. The film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” has a harping political content which generates the cause of war at global paradigm. While trapped within the tunnel, Milan recognises that the village is burning, destroying the property of Hilal, his bosom friend. He also understands that he is fighting war but for whom he is fighting, or why he is fighting the war, he is not sure of. Delegates come and go cutting the ribbon, at times cutting their thumbs symbolic of proceeding gory and death in the film. The tunnel which was a forbidden area during playful banter turns into a death trap for the boys who grew up watching and listening stories about the tunnel. The same tunnel turns into a bridge for Brotherhood and Unity, then transforms into the seat of blood shade and merciless killing, at the end again turned into the Tunnel of Peace which has been reconstructed and re-named mostly to efface from the minds of the people the dark history of the abandoned dungeon. The reason for the war breaking out with any intensity, at smaller level as in the village or at a greater paradigm as destructive nationalism of Milosevic the motif always lies quite political and profit extortion from the outbreak of war. Mike Wayne in his insightful book, “The Politics of Contemporary European Cinema: Histories, Borders and Diasporas” writes in the essay bearing the title, ‘The Politics of Contemporary European Cinema’, “ This is true also of ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ , another film that was received in some quarters , such as the Venice film festival, as Serbian propaganda. Yet, the film satirises Milosevic’s destructive nationalism through the figure of Slobo. This critique was recognised by a number of critics. Slobo is a cafe owner turned ‘local war profiteer’ who whips up nationalist hatred against Muslims ‘providing a most convenient cover for his criminal dreams’. Yet the very local , small scale and petty nature of Slobo accurately places Milosevic’s provincial dreams of a Greater Serbia in perspective, the absence of any external determinants on the rise of nationalism , keeps the film well within the mythology of the nation-state” (Wayne, 2002). Slobo represents the archetypal war profiteer and to sustain the national disharmony in every society, nation or state men like Slobo keep the fire of hatred ignited. In the film, there is a scene where there is a huge gathering of anti-war protesters outside the hospital where Milan is recovering, is actually being ridiculed through the action of one of their members who kicks away the crutches of a wounded soldier without any explanation to the action. Yet, the most intriguing fact about the representation of the political content in the film ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ is that there is no explicit mention of any political channel in the film towards which the anger or the frustrations of the mass can get channelized or acknowledged. Both the characters i.e. Milan and Halil fall into the trap of the nationalist war even after showing their scepticism for the actions they were undertaking without proper rationale or logic to support them. This way the film ‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’ upholds the politicisation of many nationalist sentiment which actually make the common man prey just to fulfil the desires of the political leaders for their respective cause or to fill the treasury of the war profiteers extracting optimum benefit out of the wartime situations. Another interesting and noteworthy point in the film is the volley of characterisations presented through the disparate group of Serbian soldiers trapped in the tunnel. These men have their respective belief and motivations for joining the war but there is a stark absence of homogenous dedication towards the cause or for Serbian nationalism. A pertinent display of Milosevic style where there is no point of any men transcending nationalism either. The lack of logic and numbness to which every common man gets engaged during the war, gain poignant focus through the climax of the film when Milan and Halil come out of the tunnel and discover that neither Hilal has killed Milan’s mother nor did Milan brunt Hilal’s shop. As regards to the manipulation that keeps the war sustaining gets manifested through the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” exactly the way it gets operated through the display for the cause of the war in the plot of the film. Without getting much arrogant, director Srdan Dragojevic displays the myriad ways by which a wartime situation prevails over a nation after its outbreak very subtly. Like men were being forced to join the war and were been picked up from their houses. Most of them did not join the war wholeheartedly like in the case of Velja. Petar was a schoolmaster, he is poetic. He represents a mass that remains reluctant of any situation around. As Professor Petar is reading from a burnt diary, people around start looting houses in the village. These type of men never protest, neither they do anything to take a particular stand. Through the film, it gets represented that as the society is made up of these kinds of men mostly, war or any anti-social activities get easy space to sustain. Also a situation during war which gives rise to a state of complete confusion is the prime cause for the sustenance of war. People fight but they are not aware of the cause for which they are fighting. As shown in the film, “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” the protagonist of the film, Milan is completely antagonistic towards Halil his bosom friend, but at the same time like a common man, his humane face surfaces out amid the great distress or tension of war when he is seen feeling bad for the loss of Halil’s property. The plot of the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” is based on the real-life incident. At some point of time, in the film, there are concerns for the atrocities inflicted by the Muslims who are considered as the group who are very unconscionably persecuted and a group who are not considered often as a group showing aggression in this conflict quite complex in nature. Nevertheless, very subtly Dragojevic and Bullic both at the end deny dealing with the heroes and villains. Through the depiction of the Muslim property in the film and their murder in the hands of the Serbian forces while, the Serbian forces were thrusting on the dangerous ideals of nationalism, the film makers bravely project self–condemnation through the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame”. Director Dragojevic makes no compromise in the screenplay or the cinematography of the film to deliver anti-war message through an enthralling dark humour. Conclusion “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” is a film that was received as a fascist propaganda at some plane, on the other plane it was hailed as a daring masterpiece on the silver screen as well. Shot in flashback motif, the film is a brilliant projection of anti-war sentiment but not on a serious tone. Dragojevic takes the refuge of dark humour on the contrary to reach his audience. Moving a bit from the thematic aspect of the film, if one puts his/her focus on the technical aspect, it becomes apparent that the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” is an exquisite piece of work technically as well. The film is technically astounding where Dragojevic portrays the austere topic wonderfully through a brilliant editing and marvellous camera swing. The film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” focuses on the Bosnian war but is universal in appeal. It has the capacity to touch every heart viewing the film across all the borders. The film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” will remain in the minds of its audience not for the reason that it has projected a thrilling account of war, but also for the reason that it was successful in delivering intellectual perspective regarding the causes of war and the manipulations which take place underneath the rage of violent nationalism. References Bose, S., 2002. Bosnia After Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention. Oxford University Press. Chapman, J., 2008. War and Film. Reaktion Books. Smucker, P., 1997. Serb Director’s Movie a Blood Strained Elegy to Death of Nation. Google News. [Online] Available at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19970105&id=_hUxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fgMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6593,1203799 [Accessed March 19, 2013]. University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, 1999. Pretty Village, Pretty Flame. News Bureau. [Online] Available at: http://www.uwec.edu/newsbureau/release/past/1999/99-03/031599film.html [Accessed March 19, 2013]. Wayne, M., 2002. The Politics of Contemporary European Cinema: Histories, Borders, Diasporas. Intellect Books. Read More