Mort à Sarajevo

Prestige offering from the Serb film industry fits right into the film festival mold.

The account of Balkan history they jam in (complete with caption on the genuine academic being interviewed) is the most interesting element with showing Izudin Bajrovic's failing luxury hotel, the camera snaking through it's corridors and spaces with concierge Vidovic, coming in second. The personal stories aren't bad but the everybody fails ending is a bit of a downer.

Vice to see Jacques Weber getting top billing. Muted greenish colour gets by.

Although I thought "No Man's Land" was way overrated, and even though I was skeptical about "Smrt u Sarajevu" being based on a play by French philosophy superstar BHL (Bernard-Henri Lévy), I found this movie to be captivating, surprising, poignant and insightful.

Inside the (really existing) Hotel Europa in Sarajevo, several narrative strings unfold simultaneously. While preparations are underway to commemorate the shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, which triggered the First World War, on the roof there are talking head interviews by a TV station, an important French actor arrives to rehearse his role, the hotel manager has to deal with an impending strike which would push his house into certain bankruptcy, while in the cellar a mafia figure is running a seedy but profitable night club, and he is making the hotel manager an offer he can't refuse.

This is ultimately a movie about the Yugoslaw wars and the siege of Sarajevo, a subject which surprisingly many films have failed to deal with. "Death in Sarajevo" is a rare exception.

Tanovic is a skilled director, as he showed in no-mans-land, but all the characters here were about as subtle as characters in...a play by a French intellectual, like Bernard Henri-Levy, who makes David Hare seem like Shakespeare. The film was vaguely engrossing but as soon as it finished - and it seemed to finish when it ought to get going - one was aware of how weak it was. There was far too much didactic-ism on the one hand and far too much pandering to a non-Balkan audience's image of a Balkan world of gangsters, prostitutes, money-lenders and all round violence. I am supposed to write at least 10 lines about this but god knows why as it isn't really worth two lines of comment. I can't believe the guardian gave it 4 stars (well, I can)

After reading the other reviews on this page, I am seriously baffled as to how the other writers can give the film such a high rating. Everything about this film was like a trip to the dentist -- I know it's good for me, but very painful to have to sit through.

Since I gather that the purpose of the film is to present the history of the Serbian conflict in the form of entertainment, the filmmakers choose to use a semi-documentary/hybrid form, somewhat disjointed, as the scenes of the TV Reporter constantly interrupt the more emotional and engaging story of the hotel employees planning to strike.

The momentum of the story of the impeding strike is further disrupted by the droning rehearsal of a boring bore of a boar, a government official rehearsing his impossibly tedious speech, which is seen in an overhead spy cam.

In addition, the scenes of the hotel staff are inevitably shot from behind the characters as they walk along the endless hallways and the story is spelled out in relentless dribble that varies from deep personal observations to hostile confrontations. (The technique is reminiscent of "Elephant" by Gus Van Sant, and gives it an additional level of distance from the emotional aspect of the story.) In one horrible scene, shown in long shot, a leader of the strike is beaten into submission by a couple of hired thugs, which is highly symbolic of the overall theme.

By utilizing the various formats, the filmmakers have accomplished a kind of Brecht-ian distancing from the actual events and enabled a kind of "objective" reporting of the facts. We are never told who to sympathize with, and not presented with any moral conclusions. Yet there is an attempt to show a culture that is forever doomed to repeat it's own past mistakes. However, like a dose of bitter medicine, just because it's good for you doesn't mean you have to swallow it whole.

One person in the name of hate, has brought about more than one major war. From World War I to the recent genocide, the Balkans have their fair share of such malevolent individuals. This specter of history and hatred is on display in the modern day Hotel Europa of Sarajevo as a European Union delegation arrives, an unhappy and unpaid hotel workforce prepares to strike, and a network broadcasts a heated political discussion from the roof of the building. Sparks fly between different factions on personal, regional and global levels. Instead of helping others, they do everything to make each other's lives miserable. The hotel owner, unable to pay bills, turns to darker elements within himself as well as the hotel, to try to maintain order. People treat each other as objects to use for their own selfish goals. Violence has been with the region for so long, yet can they find a way beyond it?

Death in Sarajevo includes some fascinating conversations and differing views on the Balkans from the World War One assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, to the present day. This local perspective on such conflicts, in the native tongue, is not something that is readily available in North America, or even on the world wide web, so it is all the more valuable here. The acting, plot and settings are limited and restrained, yet the subject of the story makes up for these absences. Seen at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. Prizewinner at Berlin Film Festival.