Finale, from "Vukovar, jedna priča" (Vukovar: A Story) (1994), directed by Boro Drašković
From the highly stylized and multihued eruption of war at the start of Apocalypse Now, we shift to a grimmer, literally documentary approach. Vukovar is barely known today. But it's an interesting movie, if somewhat mushy in its politics and predictable in its romance. The Serb (Toma) and Croat (Anna) lovers have celebrated the fall of socialism in Yugoslavia by marrying in Vukovar, a multiethnic city on the frontier that quickly becomes the most heavily besieged and bombarded city in the Balkans. The sequence begins with their painful parting on separate buses (a beautiful shot). With the film made only a couple of years after the fighting stopped, Serb director Drašković was able to capture an extraordinary cinematic moment, one that took my breath away on first viewing. As the central character, Toma (Boris Isakovic), emerges from a lane, the camera suddenly takes off, borne by helicopter, and begins a leisurely circuit over the shattered city of Vukovar, while a haunting folk song plays. (I have no idea which; maybe one of my friends can enlighten me.) As Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times in 1996, "The movie's stunning final sequence almost makes up for its frustrating [political] skittishness. As the camera surveys what's left of Vukovar and environs, it finds mile after mile of charred wasteland with nary a sign of life." It's hard to think of a sequence that so starkly conveys the reality and futility of modern ethnic war and genocide.
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