Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

Description

This provocative and disturbing movie is based on an incident that happened in the first winter of the war in Bosnia in 1992. Two childhood friends, one a Serb the other a Muslim, square off on opposite sides of war, their friendship tattered and in ruins. Interactive Menus, Production Notes, Scene access, Trailer

Customer Reviews:

Moving.......2007-06-15

Shows how a war can turn reality upside down

could have been better written.......2007-03-11

Could have been better written, better acted, better photographed. Way too many flashbacks.
This whole thing is kind of a mess, really. Lacks cohesiveness.
Premise is interesting enough and a truly gifted director might have made a great film out of it.

The guy who directed this is no Akira Kurosawa, that's for sure.

superficial, stereotypical view of Bosnian war.......2006-05-20

This flick has all the sophistication of a music video. It is basically an excuse for the director to show guys getting drunk and shooting off guns in a village in flames at night time, while Yugoslav rock music blares. The relationship between the Serb and Muslim boyhood-friends-turned-enemies should be the crux of the movie but it is never adequately explored.

It is no different than every other movie on the Bosnian war, with the exception of No Man's Land. It does not show the geopolitical situation of the time or the machinations of elites but rather assumes the bloodshed was the result of ancient or grassroots ethnic hatreds. Obviously there were "ordinary" Croatians, Serbians, and some Bosniacs involved in atrocities, but this is only part of the story.

I got the feeling that this is the kind of movie made by a director who spent the early 1990s in Germany.

The Simple Truth.......2006-05-12

I found the movie thought provoking. One line in the movie said "War is a Whore". I don't think it could be more well stated. Yes, translation was a bit rough around the edges so I'm sure some verbal effects were lost, but I don't think it detracted from the movie. A little hard to watch. But truth is often not kind.

The Bosnian Apocolypse Now!.......2006-03-10

One of my half Serb, half Croat friends recommended this movie to me. This movie really paints a picture of life surrounding the 93-95 war. It reinforced a lot which I learned when I was over there, after the war. May be difficult for some in the West to fully understand. It made Apocolypse Now look pretty tame. There was nothing held back in this movie. I recommend it to anyone interested in recent events in the Balkans.

Stalingrad / Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

Average customer rating:

Tears of laughter. Tears of horror.

Stalingrad / Pretty Village, Pretty Flame
Starring: Dragan Bjelogrlic , Nikola Kojo , Dragan Maksimovic , Zoran Cvijanovic , and Milorad Mandic
Director: Srdjan Dragojevic , and Joseph Vilsmaier
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B00000JS7J
Release Date: 1999-11-23

Description

one each of Pretty Village, Pretty Flame and Stalingrad: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame is a provocative and disturbing movie based on an incident that happened in the first winter of the war in Bosnia in 1992. Two childhood friends, one a Serb the other a Muslim, square off on opposite sides of war, their friendship tattered and in ruins. Stalingrad Reveals the gritty reality of combat and conveys the hopes, dreams, and stories of a platoon of young soldiers caught in the bloodiest battle in history.

Customer Reviews:

Tears of laughter. Tears of horror........2000-08-15

OK, first of all, Pretty Village Pretty Flame. The translation sucks, but then again, translating this movie sucks. Because unlike most people who will (hopefully) read this, I actually understand Serbian and let me tell you, when it comes to cursing, no language can beat it. The curses, which play an important role in this movie, making it both hilarious and tragic, are of truly epic proportions. I'm not allowed to use profanities in this review, so I won't. In a way, the movie is much like the speech Madeline Albright gave to Serbs during the NATO bombing: It makes you roll on the floor in laughter, just like you rolled on the floor when you heard her speak (her Serbian is the stuff of legends. Worse than average Italian English.). It also makes you cry because she, who once lived among them, is killing them. Just like in the movie. Friends killing friends. Well, anyway, the movie is well worth seeing, perhaps even more so if you understand the language. And there is one scene which is so tragic and yet so romantic... When this guy is wounded and knows he is dying and is preparing to shoot himself, he asks this (female) American journalist who's trapped in the tunnel along with them for, as he puts it:"Kiss for dead man." The kiss that follows is waaay better than all kisses in the entire history of movies. So full of love and you can see the journalist saying don't pull the trigger with her eyes, her face, her whole body and soul... gives me the shivers every time I see it. As I said before, you may not get the whole movie due to language barrier. But what remains still easily earns 5 stars.

The other movie, Stalingrad, well, I (obviously) couldn't identify with it as well as I could with Pretty Village Pretty Flame, but it's still amazing. Ryan perhaps had better special effects. Big friggin deal. Thin Red Line is more poetic. So what. This is war. The complete and unabridged edition. No gun salute. No folded flags. No old man with a granddaughter with a nicely rounded granddaughter on a French cemetary with an American flag. Buy it. Watch it. Cry. You'll feel relieved afterwards.

DVD:

DVD

DVD