Savior (Review)
Sunday, 4. February 2007, 22:53:50
Joshua Guy (Dennis Quaid) in a dual type of hell in Savior.
You don't need to go back to medieval times to find the roots of the
civil war that plagued the Balkans in the 1990s. You don't even need to
go back to World War One. The beginnings of the conflict started in the
early 80s when Tito, near death, decided to change the Yugoslavian
constitution to allow various areas of the country the right to succeed
and form their own autonomous regions. It isn't clear whether this
change was a vision of the future for Yugoslavia or whether it was
Tito's last act of perversion. It may have been both. In any case, after
Tito's death, slowly, the various regions of Yugoslavia began to break
away.
The various ethnicities in Yugoslavia were (and are) a rather
homogeneous mix. Think of a large jar of marbles of different colors,
all mixed up with each other. The government under Tito had primarily
been controlled, or at least administered, by Serbs. This was due to the
primacy of the capitol in Belgrade, primarily a Serbian area. When the
various regions started breaking away, the power tended to go to the
group most predominant in the area. And as it has been so often in
history, people in power don't like giving that power up. Milosevic came
up with the idea of "Serbia for the Serbs" and threw the Yugoslav Army in
support of so-called victimized Serbians in the former regions. To this
was added various whacko para-military units of the type that tend to
spring up during periods of anarchy.
Eventually, as the saying goes, all hell broke loose. And hell is a
very good description of what occurred over the next half-dozen years
or so. The three different ethnic groups started going at each other
across the region. This war, called the "Homeland War" in Croatia, was
not a war of army against army. This was a war in which armies and the
various para-military groups waged war against civilians. Fighting
another army you have the problem of attrition to worry about.
Slaughtering the fathers and daughters and grandmothers of the enemy is
much easier, as it turned out. If it is all about controlling an area,
well just go in and kick the opposition out of their towns and villages
and cities. If you do that, you can gain control.
That's a nutshell view, but it's a fairly accurate one. It was all about
power, and escalated into insanity. The United Nations sent
"peacekeepers" or "observers" in, but the peacekeepers didn't keep the
peace and the observers sat around in their armoured vehicles and sipped
coffee while horrendous massacres took place.
This is the world that Savior (1998) inhabits. The story centers
around Joshua Rose (Dennis Quaid). After his wife is killed in Europe in
a terrorist bombing Joshua changes his name to Joshua Guy and joins the
Foreign Legion. But he quickly tires of that, and along with a fellow
legionnaire ends up in Bosnia as a mercenary for the Serbian forces. At
this point Joshua is a man in search of a soul. After his friend is
killed, he serves as a sniper outside a city under seige (in the same
way as Sarajevo was under seige). He shoots anyone trying to escape the
city, and eventually shoots a teenage boy. Following this act Joshua is
haunted by the memory of the boy and the guilt that he feels for shooting
him.
Joshua eventually is given the job of taking a pregnant young Bosnian
woman to an exchange point in a brokered prisoner exchange. The soldier
he is travelling with is a sadist. He stops the jeep and beats the young
woman. Joshua sits by as this happens. When the young woman (Natasa Ninkovic)
begins to go into labor, the soldier decides to kill her and the child. Joshua
finds he can no longer sit by, and ends up killing the soldier. After that, he
becomes a fugitive from the Serbs.
Joshua and Vera and the newborn take off across the nightmarish Bosnian
landscape. When Vera is rejected by her father for being raped in the
camp (a classic "blame the victim" attitude), both find they are without
a home. They decide to head for Split, a city on the Croatian coast that
is neutral in the conflict and which just might offer some hope of
getting away from the war and starting a new life.
Savior is very sad, and at times mind-numbingly brutal. But the ending
is not typical Hollywood fare, and after the horror that has gone before
achieves something close to transcendence.
The movie was produced by Oliver Stone and directed by Predrag Antonijevic.
The soundtrack by David Robbins, unavailable for many years, has finally
been released and is hauntingly beautiful, containing a good bit of a cappella
vocal music from the Balkans. I would like to thank Eckzel, a reader who stopped
by, with help locating the soundtrack.
Nastassja Kinski gets the big print on the cover on this movie, but she
is in the movie about five minutes. Maybe even four minutes. It is
Natasa Ninkovic that is the lead female role here, and she is superb.
And if you never thought Dennis Quaid could act, you will be surprised.
He gives an incredible performance in this movie.
Recently, Hotel Rwanda has dealt with similar issues of ethnic
cleansing. I suppose that by the time that one came out people were a
little more willing to pay attention to such issues. Between Savior
and Hotel Rwanda, Savior is the better movie.
After World War II there arose a phrase -- "Never again." Never
again, we said, would we let that kind of genocide happen. But
is has happened. And it's happening now. And it will no doubt
happen again. There really doesn't need to be a god to destroy
humans for their evil deeds in a flood. We seem to be all too
competent at brutalizing ourselves. In Savior there is a tiny
light at the end, one that can remind us that in spite of all
there is still the possibility for humanity and mercy in the world.
In fact, the darker the world, the more the need for those things.
For a cultural look at the problem, go here.
For an assessment of the situation today, go here.
The Goddess Ma'at.
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 5. February 2007, 00:06
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ivaU4lRSw
zetoh_mesquita # 19. February 2007, 00:30
I live in Europe, I followed this war on the press and TV news, I knew that all parts in this war reached extremes of cruelty and evil beyond the imaginable and yet, if this film is true to reality, it shows it was far more evil than I could imagine!
edwardpiercy # 19. February 2007, 01:11
Anonymous # 22. September 2007, 14:22
the soundtrack can be found here: http://www.davidrobbinsmusic.com/musicmain.htm
edwardpiercy # 22. September 2007, 18:07
I also fixed the expired link at the bottom of the post.
gdare # 17. October 2008, 17:17
A soldier (Sergej Trifunović) is a brother of a young woman (Nataša Ninković) in a movie.
edwardpiercy # 17. October 2008, 17:34
I was wondering if you would read this review. Sort of nervous, in fact. I hope there was nothing in it that offended you, and I hope that I did a decent job explaining things -- it was a tough subject for we Americans to understand back in the 90s, and just why we needed to go into the region. I think that history shows that the choice was a correct one. The region still has its problems but is more or less at peace. There is healing now, it seems. Now if we could just get rid of all the damn land mines...it was estimated that it would take 40 years to get rid of them all.
gdare # 17. October 2008, 17:47
You explained it pretty well; also, the movie explained it very well. I would just add that besides Milosevic, there were two more persons that were guilty as he was, they had just been lucky to die before being arrested and transported to Hague - president of Croatia Franjo Tudjman and president of muslim part in Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic.
I don`t think it was a good decision that USA got themselves involved in this war. Actually, I think USA partially started it at the very beginning of 1991, by encouraging national leaders (including Milosevic) to start conflicts. I know it sounds ridiculous, from your point of view, but I really believe in this.
Explaining will take a lot of time. Maybe we will discuss about it once. I would like to hear your opinion too.
edwardpiercy # 17. October 2008, 18:14
I do know that it was an unpopular war here in the US. I don't think anybody really understood what was going on over there. Which is another point we might discuss.
One thing I do know, there has been more bullshit circulated over here about that war than you could imagine, include some from a noted scholar at Harvard, Noam Chomsky. Fuck, the guy didn't even go to Croatia or BiH or Serbia to do research in the field like any normal graduate student would he do. He just sits in his lofty chair and pontificates. He should have been thrown out of Harvard a decade ago.
They always say, "history is written by the victors." But in the Homeland War, it seems to me there were no victors.
gdare # 17. October 2008, 20:11
I don`t think there are few (stil alive) that could tell almost whole story. And some tensions started during 1988. while everything seemed to be still in order. I was in army then and I remember some things that happened. Some changes that were about to happen; along with breaking a wall in Berlin and dismemberment of Soviet Union. Balkan tribes, lead by nationalists leaders, still remembering the wounds left from the WWII, needed just a small push.... and once, Pandora box was opened....
If you are interested, just send me your mail, or you can ask me whatever you want in pm. I don`t know all the facts and some things are based on guessing, but I can tell you my point of view, at least. I will leave conclusions to you, I don`t tend to change anyone`s opinion. And certainly won`t like to got stuck in a long pointless discussions with anyone. This is why I don`t make political based posts in my blog. I made it only once, about Kosovo, few months ago. And I made it friends only.
It is too late now, my mind is tired