Svjedoci

Without glamorous Hollywood special effect this movie which on the first glance looked simple manage to convey a very powerful message and compex characters. It is an event (a murder) that under war situation develops very differently than it would be if it is peace; The nationalities of murders and the victims as well as their roles in war became more imortant that the crime itself. The characters and their motivies become more clear as the film develops. I was born in Belgrade so I am very familiar with the tragedy of the Balkan war. However even for my husband who is French and is much less familiar with what happen in 90- ies in ex-Yugoslavia, film was easy to follow and the complexity of the message was easy to understand. We both liked it very much. BTW - Excellent cast.

(2003) Witnesses/ Svjedoci (In Croatian with English subtitles) POLITICAL MYSTERY DRAMA

Adapted from the novel written by Jurica Pavicic who was also credited for co-writing the screenplay along with it's director, Vinko Bresan. The film opens with 3 soldiers in uniform killing a man after a planned break in of a man's home, When lead investigator, Barbir (Drazen Kuhn) investigates, viewers find out that the killing may be a political since this was during the times when hostilities and tensions arises when both Serbia and Croatians must get along. As the title indicates called "Wiitnesses", there also may be a possible "witness" in which viewers are oblivious about who is being held captive.

I find it hard to believe that someone might give this amazing film less than an 8. If they do, it is undoubtedly either because they do not understand it, or for nationalistic reasons. Those who ascribe to a simplistic, black-and-white view of the war in Croatia will be disappointed with the grey in which Svedoci operates.

What Bresan achieves is a stunningly human portrait of the nuance between good and evil which predominates in times of war. From virtually every standpoint--artistic, technical, acting, musical--this film is astonishingly good. Though it is about the war in Croatia during the 1990s, the film's themes are relevant to virtually every civil conflict.

I highly recommend it to any serious cinemaphile.

Tough to digest movie. But it recalls very vividly the heaviness of war. It shows the gallery of characters who typically benefit from the war and also the ones who get lost in it. My favourite character is bartender Ljubo (Predrag Vusovic), disillusioned, "leave me alone" kind of person, who is very well embedded in the war economy. Kind of a survivor who hates the way his life still goes on. Some of the war scenes may seem shocking to the viewers who were lucky enough not to witness the war in their countries. But for the rest of us, they are very familiar. As for the technical part, the movie is somehow confusing with its back and forth story-line, and some of the acting is not always convincing, but all considered, it's still a great movie for vaccinating someone against military fever.

Nobody really cares that a low life gets killed, he isn't even shown in the movie, we are not supposed to care about him. Although we don't care about the witness as well, not supposed to by the director. And we continue with the same blunt tone set in the very beginning of the movie. The coldness towards the witness is surprising and unrealistic, no emotions shown throughout the movie.

Let's talk about the retrospective jumps. The story is one short happening over a couple of days timeline viewed from a few people's perspectives, which are overlapping as people are usually at the same place at the same time . Movie is kind of slow paced so this raises the movie dynamic greatly, unfortunately it gets a little bit confusing towards the end, and scenes are repeated too many times that it gets irritating. Except the main story line we get to see some pretty cool but unfortunately short retrospective, they don't add much to the story just to introduce characters and show us how they got here, (victim's and witness's unfortunately aren't shown).

The message? I don't think there is one, every character is a horrible human being except one that is just passive. You wait for something and get very empty ending. Like some politically correct story that still intended (by showing a few Croatian soldiers, while defending against Serbian invasion, as not so diabolic but cold and heartless people), and managed, to get people angry.

To be absolutely fair the reason to watch this movie is to see debut of a promising star Melody, her "out of this world" stunning performance alone is worth the watch. She was a baby then, but she is a babe now.