This was the movie responsible for breaking billion hearts on oscar night in 2002. I was rooting for my favorite Indian movie Lagaan (in the best foreign film category) but it lost to the Bosnian movie named "No Man's Land ". So I developed a "healthy" and self-justifying disdain for this Bosnian movie, refusing to watch it even after reading raving reviews.
But now since going through the process of shedding my cognitive dissonance et al, I got around to watch the movie last night. As all the ancient wisdom preaches "hatred blinds virtue", now I am ruing over missing one of the all time great movie for such a long time. I call it one of the all time great because of the powerful and simple story telling, where most of the movie is shot in a trench. The vacillating human emotions of hatred, cooperation, love and death unfolds in a spectacular way. Its a fantastic movie and it earned the well deserved Oscar.
The most poignant and funniest dialogue exposing the cognitive dissonance in the movie is the discussion between Bosnian soldiers sitting in a fox hole:
"Bosnian Soldier 1: (Reading the newspaper) God!
Bosnian Soldier 2: What's wrong?
Bosnian Soldier 1: What a mess in Rwanda!"
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