Harrison's Flowers [DVD] [2000]

Early on, Harrison is persuaded by his boss to take on one last assignment into harm's way. (This worn out plot device may cause the viewer to cringe. But, let's move on.) So, off Harrison goes with his camera gear to the debris field that was Yugoslavia. It's 1991, and the Croats and Serbs are at each other's throats. A couple weeks later, Sarah receives word that her husband was apparently killed in a building collapse. However, in her gut she believes him to be still alive. So, off she jets to the war zone, leaving her two young children behind, to bring hubby home.

After arriving in Graz, Austria, Sarah rents a car with the intent of driving to Vukovar, where she hopes to find Harrison in the local hospital. In the rental lot, she offers a ride to a young Yugoslav returning from Paris to find his wife. Soon after transiting the border, they cross paths with a rampaging tank accompanied by some very nasty troops, and Sarah is horrifically initiated into the brutal realities of the Serbo-Croat civil war.

In Sarah's subsequent tortuous quest into Hell, Andie's character takes a back seat to those gamely played by Adrien Brody (Kyle Morris) and Brendan Gleeson (Mark Stevenson), media photographers who take Sarah under their wings while moving her forward. For her part, Sarah seems emotionally and psychologically dazed amidst the sudden, random violence and rains of aerial bombs and artillery shells.

HARRISON'S FLOWERS is a gritty, tense and powerful tale in which the French director, Elie Chouraqui, makes no attempt to enlighten the audience on the cultural gulf separating Serb and Croat or the genesis of this particular inter-tribal slaughter. And, for insular U.S. audiences constantly puzzled by Balkan excesses, it probably doesn't matter - all the combatants are crazy.

It's hard to say if the blood lust of the region is realistically depicted or not. However, remembering newspaper reports of the period, it would seem to be. Although the plot is implausible - middle class, American wife swept along to an uncertain destination in the currents of ethnic cleansing - the film is a shocking look at a time and place that most viewers can be thankful they only heard about. And it's probably the closest Andie MacDowell will ever come to being an action hero.

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I sat tight hoping for what promised to be a gritty love-during-war film with an Eastern European twist, but all it really was was a dress rehearsal for Adrien Brody's award-winning cameo in The Pianist two years afterward.

My problems began when voice-overs of all the characters sprung up in the middle of the script. A curious narrative technique for a theme of this nature. Just when you were in the moment feeling dumbstruck with what you had just seen, out came someone in candid camera reminiscing after the fact. Smacks to me of an eleventh hour decision made during post-production, or a failed stunt to lend a realistic tone to the film (we are told it is based on real events).

As a "War is Evil" statement it succeeds to an extent in depicting some heinous atrocities of war, supported amply by a brilliant score, but I left with no more appreciation for the ethnic belligerence in the Balkans than I had before the film. "Welcome to Sarajevo" or "No Man's Land" have stricken a lot more strident note in that regard.

As a love story, it held my interest in parts but unravelled much too slowly as our motley crew of reporters meandered through cavernous cities at turtle pace, leaving enough time for some key melodrama to unfold. Finally, when the Mr. Harrison of the title is found and brought back to the warmth of his humongous family house, all his remnant trauma is resolved much too quickly. Barring some very effective flowers it is also unclear what brought about his well-being.

Much of my three-star appreciation for the film goes to the cinematographers for evoking a smoking war zone which includes some very difficult shoots through a nightmarish countryside. The 48 journalists that the DVD tells us were killed during the conflict had a clear purpose to leave a memory of the war for posterity, but the purpose of this commemorative film is anyone's guess.

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