Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

How is it possible that a savage civil war could break out in a sophisticated European country at the end of the 20th century? Pretty Village, Pretty Flame by Montenegran director Srdjan Dragojevic goes a very long way towards answering that question. In the beginning, Milan, a Serb, and Halil, a Muslim, are lifelong friends. They live in the same tiny village, they play basketball together, they are drinking companions. This powerful film charts the fortunes of the two men, especially Milan - inexorably, it depicts how friends become enemies... Pretty Village, Pretty Flame doesn`t sheet home the blame for the Bosnian tragedy. It concentrates on the effects of the war on the victims, both civilians and members of the armies of mercenaries that formed to fight one another. Even an American woman journalist becomes involved when, in the film`s harrowing and protracted climax, a group of Serbs are trapped in a tunnel by Muslim forces - ironically, a tunnel opened by president Tito in 1971 as a symbol of friendship between the different ethnic groups who made up the former Yugoslavia. This film, so very much better in my view than Emir Kusturica`s seriously flawed Underground, is not only a terribly visceral and involving war film, it`s also a serious, humane and at times grimly funny film which brings tragic events vividly to the screen.