The Living And The Dead [DVD]

First of all; forget the cover. These seem to be the days of misleading DVD covers with little or no relation to the film inside. Here, for instance, you'll find no bombers, tanks or heavy action despite what the cover will have you believe.Instead, the film follows a platoon of Croat HVO soldiers in 1993 during the Yugoslavian Civil War, with flashbacks to a similar platoon of Ustasha/Domobran soldiers in 1943. In 1993 their enemies were Muslims and Serbs, in 1943 Red partisans. It is a fairly slow-moving story, with lots of walking, dialogue and endless smoking (was it sponsored by the Croatian tobacco industry?). Action is rare, and frequently takes place at night when you see mostly shadows and gunflashes. The cover speaks of defending a strategically valuable strip of land, but to me it appeared that the patrols started out in the middle of nowhere and ended up in the middle of another nowhere. The enemy is rarely seen except in flashes. Only in a scene where the 1993 patrol attacks a group of Muslim soldiers and kill them all, do the insanity of the war come across when HVO men talk about going to school with one of their victims and even playing in a band with him.The film has won numerous awards at film festivals most of us have probably never heard of. Unfortunately, to me it was rather bewildering and, frankly, somewhat boring. No doubt it will appear different to Croats who know their country's history and remember the Civil War. However, it is the first Croatian film I have ever seen and I'll be giving it another try later. For curiosity value at least, it might be worth 87 minutes of your time too.

This time-switching view of the seemingly endless Balkan Wars is a nice idea. Show how little had really changed in 50 years. Men fight over the same ground as their grandfathers, little has changed since WWll, neighbour kills neighbour, same old prejudices. Trouble is , we all knew that, and better films have been made about it. That said, it is a perectly adequate effort about the ongoing pointlessness and futility of war, and gets 3 well-deserved stars.

Excellent film,very pleased

Mlakic's popular novel comes out on dvd,many people said that the cover for the book was misleading anyway.It follows two stories in Bosnia, between two wars (1943 and 1993)The Living and the Dead is not an easy movie to sit through, and its darkness, horrific, unrelentingly, sad and grim set it out just right just like the book.This moive may be a little mannered, but it's an elegant construction with real emotions are buried deep inside the characters so many people will not have the stomach for it.It's a good story, but except for feeling a certain amount of fear when situations got out of hand, I never really felt too much for any of the characters, which is a shame since it seems to be mainly a character piece.buy this now if you enjoy war films

I was disappointed by this 2007 Croatian war/ghost film and I regret that I bought and watched it. Below, more of my impressions, with some limited SPOILERS.Before going to the film itself, I just want to precise that seeing it was part of a kind of watching project, during which I focused on non-American and non-Hollywoodian "exotic" war movies. Other than "The living and the dead" it allowed me to see movies from South Korea ("Frontline", "My way", "71 into the fire"), China ("Assembly"), Australia ("Kokoda", "Beneath Hill 60"), Finland ("Ambush"), Norway ("Max Manus, man of war"), Denmark ("Flame and Citron"), Netherlands ("Winter in Wartime"), Russia ("Admiral", "Fortress of War", "White Tiger", "9th Company"), Thailand ("Bang Rajan") and Spain ("Frozen Silence"). Sadly, "The living and the dead" was the least satisfying of all those viewings.This film, albeit made with a little budget, was clearly an ambitious and interesting project. The general idea was to take two small squads of Croatian soldiers fighting IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE but in two different wars... In this film we can follow a group of six Croatian soldiers fighting in Bosnia in 1993 against both Serbians and Muslims, as well as a group of about a dozen Croatian soldiers (including a reluctant Muslim conscript) during an anti-partisan sweep in Bosnia in 1943, in a time when Croatia was an ally of III Reich. In the first group one of the soldiers is the grandson of one of soldiers from the second group. At one moment a supernatural element intervenes making this film also into a ghost story...This initial idea was quite interesting - but the execution was abysmally bad! Both stories are extremely boring, as they consist mainly of hiking in the mountains during which the conversations are mostly just banalities drowned in a torrent of obscenities... It is impossible to relate to anybody in this film as all men (there is not even one woman on the screen) are either totally boring losers or absolutely abject @holes.What hurts this film even more is that there is no sense from the military point of view in any of those stories. The 1943 soldiers seem just to wander aimlessly in the mountains as mobile targets. The 1993 soldiers are supposed to man a precious advanced post - which doesn't seem to serve any purpose and must be evacuated immediately after they reach it.Do not expect any action scenes - there is a couple of shootouts but they are as un-interesting as humanly possible, the longest occurring in absolute darkness in which it is impossible to understand who shoots at whom... The tanks and planes on the cover of the DVD are just a marketing stunt - NOT EVEN ONE tank or plane appears on the screen! There is no interesting dialogs and there are only two good lines in this whole film. And to crown everything the ending, if you can actually call it an ending, is ABSOLUTELY ILLOGICAL and IDIOTIC!The supernatural elements don't serve any purpose other than just muddle the story and make the ending more stupid.Bottom line, this is a bad film, buying it was a waste of money and watching it was a loss of time. Two stars only for the general idea, which was good, as well as for the one good joke in which we learn the definition of a Montenegrian man of honor at the wedding...))) I gave this DVD away immediately after watching it and my advice is to AVOID IT!

Film was terrible plus it was in a foreign language I hated it other than that I would buy from you again

Perfect :)