For her directorial debut, actress Angelina Jolie has picked one of the most ambitious types of movies, but one that feels oddly within her scope of relevance. For any director, new or old, crafting a film about personal relationships in wartime is a tricky proposition. Thankfully, In the Land of Blood and Honey shows that while she might still have a ways to go behind the camera, Jolie does have the chops to be more than just an on camera presence.
Never once appearing on screen and working from a non-English script, Jolie sets about to tell the tale of Ajla (Zana Marjanovi) and Danijel (Goran Kostic) and their on again, off again relationship during the 1992-95 Bosnian Civil War. Danijel is a Serb police officer with a military leader father (the always reliable Rade Serbedzija) and Ajla is a Muslim artist taken from her family and placed into a prisoner camp. Remembering her from a night they spent together at a club before the war kicked into high gear, Danijel protects Ajla from further rape, torture, and humiliation at the hands of his fellow soldiers. They begin a tentative relationship that constantly fractures due to the mistrust the war brings on and Danijel’s constant redeployments.
To Jolie’s immense credit, she prepares the audience to a brutal world quite early and without warning. If there’s one thing Jolie has already mastered – aside from getting great performances from her actors – it’s the element of surprise. The tone is uniform and foreboding throughout. The steady hand she shows coupled with the work the cast puts in sells the material without ever making it easy to watch.
The one place where Jolie needs more focus, however, is in the editing room. The film is too long by at least 25 minutes of filler that serves no purpose except to make the audience more uncomfortable than they already are. Scenes of people lining up to be slaughtered and an almost incalculable number of rape sequences could be scaled back greatly. There’s a difference between showing atrocities and wallowing in misery for the sake of berating the audience, and only at the far too poetic for its own good ending does Jolie really cross the line.
Then again, maybe this would have been a passable complaint if the two lead characters were better fleshed out in the script. All we know about Danijel is that he’s not particularly likable, conflicted about killing, and he has an overbearing father. All we know about Ajla is that she has a family. And that’s really it. The ambiguity of the characters once again brings to light Jolie’s lack of clear vision in the edit. If the film had stuck to either just showing a sweeping look at wartime violence and persecution, it might’ve had more impact. If the relationship (I really hesitate to use the term “love story” because it certainly isn’t) had taken the foreground, maybe it would’ve been more poignant.
In the Land of Blood and Honey is about as tough a sell as one could get. Jolie does deserve credit for getting the movie made in the first place, and it would be interesting to see where she takes her directorial career from here. It’s definitely far from perfect in any respect, but it does show promise for the future.
Rating: 
Rated 14A
Cast: Rade Serbedzija, Zana Marjanovic, Goran Kostic
Directed by: Angelina Jolie
Top image: A scene from In the Land of Blood and Honey. Courtesy Alliance Films.
