Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I know very little about this film aside from the fact that it's opening in limited release opposite a great little film called Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN that I just saw. Hope this one's as good as that was. Here's one of our most beloved ex-Presidents with his take on things.
Harrison's Flowers
Dir. by Elie Chouraqui
There have been quite a few war movies out, but interestingly enough, HARRISON'S FLOWERS focuses on the now half-forgotten conflict in Bosnia, and focuses on the wartime photographers who were stuck in the fighting.
The film is uneven, and lurches suddenly from Melodrama to Gripping War Movie. But despite its over the top moments, HARRISON'S FLOWERS is by the end a solid effort. Set near the beginning of the Balkan conflicts in 1991, the movie follows Sara Lloyd (Andie MacDowell), the wife of NEWSWEEK photographer Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn), who is presumed dead in Yugoslavia shortly after being put on assignment there.
The first reel drags along, with MacDowell doing her best to emote with a sometimes badly written character as she goes around saying that, damnit, Harrison must be alive, convinced that she saw him during a brief clip showing war prisoners on CNN. The Lloyds' son (Scott Anton) sort of listlessly stares off into space; I believe they told him to look "withdrawn" during filming and it was the best they could do. Leaving her two children behind with her mother, she travels to the war-torn region, hoping against hope that her husband is somehow alive and well.
Oddly enough, its very easy for her to simply drive across the Austrian border, with a refugee trying to get back into the country. She suddenly finds herself driving into a violent war zone, right smack into a tank bombing a village, among the first of the many implausible plot contrivances the film at times resorts to.
Finally in the middle of the violent carnage, and after being roughed up by local paramilitary thugs, Sara meets a small crew of journalists stuck in the middle of the warring militias, chief among them Kyle (excellently played by Adrien Brody), a freelance photographer who argued with Harrison back in the States. The film then becomes a war movie as the photographers sneak into a dangerous Serb-held town and countryside, where killing and senseless brutality abound. They're warned time and time again not to enter this hellish zone, but they do so anyways.
The ruins of these drab, post Soviet-bloc cities in the autumn help contribute to the oppressive, sickening atmosphere of the latter half of the film, the grays and browns dominating the picture. Misery litters the countryside as Sara and the journalists press on to find her husband, passing by one pile of bodies after another. As she nears her goal, she and the others becomes witnesses to the war.
The film is nowhere near perfect. Like I've said, the film's beginning scenes are melodramatic and manipulative, and there are a few implausible scenes. One where the journalists manage to openly sneak past a post of drunken Serb soldiers comes to mind. One of the journalists all of a sudden gets an interior monologue in the middle of the film. And there are other, smaller quibbles.
Yet as one watches the film one gets an appreciation for the danger of wartime photography, how these modestly paid journalists risk life and limb just to get the images that help define entire moments in history. The film does an excellent job portraying this, reminding one of the tragedy and mindlessness of the Balkan wars. HARRISON'S FLOWERS manages to overcome its faults by the end.
The movie comes out March 15, in limited release.
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