No Man's Land - (Exactly)

In No Man’s Land, a heavy fog and a simple mistake play as the first two dominos to a chain of unfortunate events that end with only the ravens and the peacekeepers just doing their jobs. Because of critical media attention and the risky politics of being neutral, a situation that would otherwise be unremarkable flowers into a political, physical, and mental battle for everyone involved.

All of the establishing action takes place within a trench between the opposing Serbian and Bosnian lines, a proverbial no man’s land. The message of the movie focuses more on the product of the action rather than the action itself; however, the camera assumes plenty of low-angle shots while crawling the trenches and extreme long shots while facing the warring lines from afar. Thanks to the skillful camerawork, we can almost feel the limits of the trench peak just over our heads. Special camera pans and cranes are scarce, but such prudence adds to the scenes that finally do employ such movements.

The film plays with the global ties between two warring nations and the neutral parties that must still play according to protocol. On an individual level, the soldiers not only find common ground during the time they are not vying for situational control, but they also learn that neither side is even sure who started the war. For the soldiers, the war becomes secondary to their egos and the lives of their comrades after the unconscious man wakes. That does not make the war any less real, however, and initially the UNPROFORCE is not interested in helping the men from the trench because of the political and physical energies that would be sacrificed to help them. It is the English news crew that puts pressure on the UNPROFORCE command to allow Sergeant Marchand to help, because on a global level it is more important that the UN save face. It shows that global interaction first fuels the war by the spread of disinformation, and then entangles it by the pressure to remain politically legitimate. In the end, a lone man remains to succumb to whatever fate may choose because, on a global scope, all has been attempted that is worth attempting to save his single life in the face of more unwanted global attention.