maurice yacowar Perhaps if this film had not been written and directed by the beautiful Angelina Jolie it would be recognized as one of the great war films. Its distinctive focus is the victimization of women in war. An end title tells us 50,000 women were raped in the Bosnian war. In the title's variation on the Promised Land, the phrase 'milk and honey' is supplanted by 'blood and honey.' That is, murder replaces sustenance, rape love, betrayal trust, and humanity is supplanted by the murderous machinery of war.One soldier tells Danijel that his pregnant wife must be delivering a son because a little daughter would drive him mad with doting. In the context his madness would have a different source: her doom to become another victim of a soldier's rape.The larger theme is the pervasiveness of division. The first shot is an aerial view of the landscape, A slash of river divides the Serbs and Bosnians. The people get along well enough to enjoy a dance together, where the Bosnian Moslem Ajla charmingly connects with the Serb soldier Danijel. Their promising romance is interrupted when a bomb shatters the club.When they next meet Ajla is a prisoner and Danijel the camp commander. That power gap inhibits both their attraction, until her humiliation drives them together. The tender eroticism of their first lovemaking derives from the refuge each finds in the other, she from the other Serb soldiers' brutality and he from the callousness of his job, personified by his father the general. Even Danijel's protection fails when he is transferred to Sarajevo. They are reunited when she, having escaped the first camp, falls in with the Bosnian underground and agrees to let herself be captured to enable her comrades to get at Danijel, now more murderous than his father. Their lovemaking turns wild from Danijel's doubting her. The division of that promising romantic couple gives way to the division within each character. Danijel is torn between his love for her and his father's hatred of the Bosnians, for what they have done to the Serbs. Ajla overcomes her emotions for Danijel to avenge the Serbs' murder of her infant nephew. So neither a passionate love nor a driven character's mission can survive the division by war.In her first scene Ajla is painting a self-portrait, in relatively naturalistic style. At the end we see her final self-portrait, a more expressionistic one in which she seems to have imposed her own splotchy image on the portrait Danijel's father ordered her to make of him, before he ordered her rape by another brute soldier. In this painting Ajla tries to expunge the general and her lover. Her ultimate portrait is what Danijel makes when his bullet to her head leaves an abstract red brushstroke against the canvas of the white wall. Bereft of all his resolve and mission he surrenders to the UN peacekeepers as a war criminal. In another form of self-portraiture Each character discovers him/herself from the tests of the war. In their night visit to the art gallery Ajla teaches Danijel that in art the most important part is the empty spaces, where the artist decides to do nothing. The war is the something the parties should not be doing. The war discovers the vacancy in both warring parties and the war's emptying of all the people's hearts, whether the respective ethnic communities or the central lovers, both together and alone.The film should not be judged as a documentary record of this war. As a fiction its thematic sweep covers a larger issue: every war's undermining of nature, humanity, and the positive sustenance of our feminine nature.

Lasher820 For those of you who are wondering whether this is a good film or a bad film, you can't judge it that way. This is a fictional film about a very real situation that happened in the Croation / Serbian / Balkan Regions in the 90's. Most Americans know nothing of the horrors that went on during this time period because American Media and Popular World media gave it very little coverage at best, but mostly no coverage at all of what was really happening.This is about the genocide in the Bosnian / Serb War. It depicts many points of view, form a Muslim's POV to A Serb's POV and many POV's in between. Serbians feared that Muslims were taking over leadership and with the help of Propaganda fueled a hatred of Muslims in the region. It was very similar to what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Neighbors and friends turned on each other. Lovers and Families were ripped apart. Women in captivity were raped and killed, children slaughtered; and the World pretty much ignored the whole situation.Angelina Jolie learned of the conflict and researched into it and was horrified by what happened and how it was not something the media seemed to care about. She wanted to tell a story to make people aware of it, but she wanted it to be true and heartfelt.The story revolves around a Muslim Woman and a conservative Serbian Army Commander and His Father and the conflict and it does jump around and give you different perspectives. It unflinchingly looks a rape of captive women in times of conflict. It's not your typical blockbuster action packed thrill ride, or your "chick flick" romantic type movie......it's an emotional roller coaster of love, hate, politics, religion, genocide, shame, guilt, pain and loss.If you find history boring or fictionalized stories interwoven with true events tedious, then you will hate this film. But if you are interested in something you may not know much about, this film is a great introduction and insight into the happenings during this war. It will most likely make you want to research more about it, dig at the truth and the aftermath. This movie is haunting and beautiful and disturbing and dark....it's not going to be everyone's idea of a good film, but in my opinion it was fantastic!

vbjelica53 I give this movie 1 because of talentless Angelina Jolie as a director, she is also talentless as an actress, but when she look good who cares. The only movies she shined in were disturbing movies. I also though it was a waste of time as Angelina seemed still very confused as to which direction to take the movie in. Even if it was biased I would have much preferred if someone like Steven Spielberg directed this kind of a big chunk of. movie, because he has a knack for reeling in watchers into a movie even some with ridiculous story lines. I also felt hat the movie lacked empathy and real emotions instead it was filled with disgusting scenes and crap over dramatic effects.

petarmatic I wanted to write a lot about this movie but I read other reviews and I found out that they describe the film accurately so please read them. I really do not have anything to add to what other people wrote about it.What I wanted to write about is the actress Zana Marijanovic. Since I know her personally I have to say she is such a nice and positive person. When she was without a boyfriend I tried to ask her for a date. She refused me flat out. Of course, I am not from the movie/acting business, but I am her fellow Sarajevan. Still, even that I was not to her liking I still, when I watch her act either in Gogo club or in Kamerni Teatar, like her very much. She radiates with such a positive energy, and is such a nice person. She is a Bosnian mixture of Sandra Bullock and Angelina Jolie.