Gavre Princip - Himmel unter Steinen

I agree pretty much with the comments already posted, but still feel the film is worthy of interest. I watched this film when it came on satellite TV because of an interest in the First World War in general and Bosnia-Herzegovina history in particular, and I believe my prior knowledge of the subject made it less inaccessible than it might be to other viewers. Yes, it's low budget to say the least, and the writing and acting is for the most part wooden. However there is some interesting location shooting in Bosnia, both in town and country, and there is also a sensitive performance by Macedonian actress Sinolicka Trpkova, who was previously seen in the Yugoslavian mini-series-turned-TVmovie 'The Time of the Gypsies'. So while agreeing for the most part with my fellow reviewers, I feel the film is worthy of investigation, and can take its place among other films on the wider subject of Yugoslavian history such as 'Time of Miracles', 'Pretty Village, Pretty Flame', 'Before the Rain' and 'Underground'. By the way, the prison doctor Dr Levin was not played by Bruno Ganz, but by the late French actor Philippe Léotard.

If anyone is wondering about the inclusion of Chess in the list of keywords for this film, it features a number of scenes where chess matches are played or discussed.

In some early scenes the students are seen at the café they frequent, playing chess; in one scene the game provides the metaphor for the planned assassination.

Later, when Princip is shown in prison at Theresienstadt, he has conversations with the prison doctor, and they play chess by memory (ie without a board). (The games featured look like real games, using the Paris Defence, unlike some depictions of chess in films).

The film itself was an interesting slant on a very familiar piece of history, by showing the affair entirely from the perspective of the students. (In doing so it pretty much glossed over the fact they killed two people, and plunged the world into a war that cost millions of lives, but maybe we know that well enough for it not to be objectionable.) An interesting exercise.

...at least for those viewers with detailed knowledge of the historical context. The acting is mediocre, true, but that wasn't important for me, as I really enjoyed the sensitive approach towards the feelings and the motivation of the young students. Imagine the pre-WWI values, nationalism, the good old "right or wrong, my country", and imagine the tensions on the Balkan peninsula, the rising serb nationalism, two years after the liberation of Kosovo, the "serb Jerusalem", as some call it even today. Think of the cheering masses at the train stations at the beginning of the war, the cars decorated with flowers and crowded with soldiers on their way to the fronts. One nations honor was considered to be worth dying and killing for, and Archduke's Ferdinands visit to Bosnia was widely regarded as (and intended to be) a provocative act.

I recommend to read Ivo Andric's "The Bridge on the Drina", it's last chapters also deal with students of a very similar background (and similar fate).

OK, it's a movie about an assassination, but without showing it. Where's the problem? This is not an action movie, this is "art" :-) A shooting scene with bad stunts, cheap effects etc... would ruin the movie instead of enhancing it.

By the way, i liked the music

P.S. I just ordered the novel...

This film was made by a nobody who then never returned to a movie set... Thank god. The book, however, is quite good and should not be tied to this terrible movie. Go to the library instead and read "Death of a Schoolboy" by Hans Koning.

Hans Koning writes: I am the author of the novels filmed,i.e. A Walk with Love and Death made by John Huston and The Revolutionary made by Paul Williams. Sadly, I cannot but agree with your critics. Huston was sick and had been given the worst non-actor alive, Asaf Dayan (speaking very bad English.) The Revolutionary was made by a student not heard of since. My third novel to be filmed, "Death of a Schoolboy", was made by an Austrian who should have confined himself to waltzes. I don't know why you mention its German title, to please the Austrian? All they say about films from novels is true, although I admittedly had VERY bad luck, 0-4.The fourth film was The Petersburg-Cannes Express, a nice and successful novel slaughtered by John Daly who fled to Albania afterward. (I had a fine script which he refused to read; I write my own scripts, he said. Disaster! Hans Koning