Angelina Jolie on dramatizing war

Angelina Jolie on the set of "In the Land of Blood and Honey," her debut as a writer-director. / Film District

NEW YORK - Angelina Jolie said that when she first began work on "In the Land of Blood and Honey," her stark drama set during the 1990s war in Bosnia, she didn't approach the project because she wanted to direct.

"I had been haunted for years from traveling in the field by lack of intervention, by the trauma people face in post-conflict situations, and my frustration in seeing the pain and wondering if we could have prevented it, if we could have done something before," Jolie said.

"This led me clearly to Bosnia because it was a war of my generation to my generation, and it was one that I felt a responsibility to learn about because I didn't know, and the more I learned, the more I was overwhelmed by the guilt of how little I knew, and was shocked by how long this went on and what was going on."

/ Film District

Dramatizing some of the most horrible incidents of the war that ripped apart the former Yugoslavia and turned Sarajevo into a city under siege for four years, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" focuses on a young couple - Ajla (Zana Marjanovic, left), a Bosnian Muslim artist, and Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serb police officer - who are reunited in the midst of the Serbian military's ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population.

As Muslims are rounded up and executed or forced to submit through torture and rape, Ajla finds herself perilously clinging to the one person who can protect her: Danijel, now a Serbian Army officer. His relationship with Ajla also poses a moral conflict for Danijel's father, a Serb general who orders genocide.

The film is brutal and unflinching in its depiction of war's effects on civilians and soldiers, from the mother who witnesses the callous murder of her own child, to the army officers who rationalize their cruelty as preserving a way of life for their own children.

The film's cinematography by Dean Semler (an Academy Award-winner for "Dances With Wolves"), with its immediacy and cool colors, also accentuates the claustrophobia felt by those trapped in a war zone - ironically, existing not very far from Bosnia-Herzegovina's peaceful, placid European neighbors.

It marks the first time the Oscar-winning actress has written and directed a film.

"It started with me questioning what if it was me and my family? What would I do?" Jolie said. "How long would it take, what would have to happen before I broke?"

/ Film District

Jolie, who for the past decade has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, said she was particularly affected by one survivor's stories of degradation by her Serbian captors, including being used as a human shield.

"She said, 'Somehow even though it wasn't the most violent, it broke her'" when soldiers took the old women and made them dance naked in front of them," Jolie said. "It was the moment that broke her mentally and she never could recover from it."

That scene - where women prisoners are ushered into a party by soldiers, and witnessed by other prisoners outside - is recreated in the film.

Jolie said that experience was particularly hard: "As a director I didn't want to ask women to do that - I felt I was torturing them," she said. "I think it was much harder for the men who were there because they had to participate and laugh at these women and act in a way that is not in their nature.

"They didn't want to be these people, but they knew if they did that it was in fact a gift they were giving to these women, because they were going to show the horrors

"They acted in a way that is very aggressive, which I feel is very noble of them to do on behalf of the women."

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[venusvegasvada]

When people start talking about war or making all encompassing, visionary statements about war or those in the military as war mongers...things along those lines...I think it's important to point out a few things.

There are those in our military services (and when I say that I don't just mean the US, but England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all the other nations)that volunteer to join them, do so for a reason. That reason is not because they love war or want it. It's just the opposite. It's a very selfless, thoughtful and adult decision based on the realization that the world as it is today is not a perfect place and that someone has to step up and be prepared for it.

To say that any General or any soldier wakes up in the morning and wishes a war would start today is the opposite of reality. That's the last thing they want. It's like saying a Doctor wakes up in the morning hoping a patient will come into their office that has terminal cancer or an insurance agent goes to work hoping to find a family that just lost everything they own in a wild fire. The point is that as a society, we prepare for the worse and hope for the best. To do otherwise would be extremely negligent for all of us.

Unfortunately it's not a perfect world. Our way of life, our system, for all it's good things and bad things, is still working and functioning and moving forward. The security of people's lives, the deeds to people's homes and property, the laws and the accomplishments, all the beautiful things in the world we enjoy from peacetime- life and liberty, art and science, music and culture, raising our families, all these things, are at the most fundamental level secured by our military's ability to protect the security of it. That's where the buck stops, so to speak. It's the last line of defense for it, our ultimate insurance policy.

Sometimes Hollywood shows the selfless side of our soldiers sacrifice and gets it right, as in the movie "Saving Private Ryan", where the good Captain passes and reveals he was an English teacher that stepped up during a time of need. There are those that do that today and leave the analyses of their actions and sacrifice to those that come afterwards during the time of peace.

In this light, the preciousness of peacetime should not be wasted away or forgotten. Peace is our most precious gift, paid for by the lives of millions stretching back for centuries. It's everyone's responsibility to remember these sacrifices and to do our level best in our day to day lives to prevent them from happening again and in treating each other as fairly and as evenly as possible.

I'm not trying to say that we should stop trying to glamorize war or stop demonstrating against it, just the opposite. That's part of moving forward. We should be trying to get to a point where there is no longer a need for war and it should be our highest aspiration. I'm just trying to point out (especially to those that have never served in the military) another point of view.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all.

[boatdocster]

Ripped off story from a third rate actress. No thanks!

[longtree-2009]

hope it doesn't glamorize war or drift into a love story because war is ugly, it's about hate, it's about killing and killing brutally.