(Bosnia and Herzegovina, 73 min.)
Dir. Jasmila Zbanic, Writ. Jasmila Zbanic, Kym Vercoe, Zoran
Solomun
Starring: Kym Vercoe, Boris Isakovic, Simon McBurney, Sasa
Orucevic
Well, here’s a fascinating film that Ottawans should see at
the University of Ottawa Human Rights Film Festival. For Those Who Can Tell No Tales is arguably the best film of the
fest. This film blends art and life as it follows Australian performance
artists Kym Vercoe (played by Australian performance artist Kym Vercoe) as she
travels to Bosnia and finds herself shell-shocked when she learns the truth
about one of her picturesque stops recommended in her travel guide. Vercoe, adapting
her own play Seven Kilometers North East
about her own travels in Bosnia, strips back the veil of touristic ignorance
behind which citizens of developed countries often hide. For Those Who Can Tell No Tales is powerful in its haunting
realization of trauma and memory, and especially for how it honours victims of
violence by sharing their story as art.
That latter point sounds a bit trite, but For Those Who Can Tell No Tales dutifully recognizes voices that have been silenced by violence and it admonishes silent onlookers who permit violence to endure. Kym arrives at her showpiece after a fitful night of sleep at the Hotel Vilina Vlas in Visegrad, which her pocket guide to Bosnia describes as a romantic getaway hidden among the trees. Her restless night prompts reflection when she returns home and discovers that the hotel actually served as a site for horrific crimes against women during the war. Sick that she slept in the same bed that offered slave chamber, Kym returns to Bosnia and makes amends.
Kym honours the victims of Hotel Vilina Vlas by revisiting
Visegrad without the rose-coloured glasses that frame her first visit. The film
presents Kym’s two visits as postcards within a frame as the film opens with
her in a Bosnian interrogation room that situates her first trip in the past
tense. The question and answer back-and-forth between Kym and the officers
unmasks the cold willful blindness that allows the truth to go unacknowledged.
Intercut between the layers of Kym’s trips are shots of the beautiful yet
ominous Ottoman bridges that serves as a focal point of Kym’s journeys. The
bridge, itself a focal point of writer Ivo Andric, who inspires Kym’s trip, is
a beautiful piece of 16th century architecture that bears the scars
of the war with the bullet holes that blemish its stunning stonework.
The bridge looks immaculate from a distance as Kym takes in
a tourist’s gaze and admires the sunlight rippling off the river. Look at the
bridge more closely, though, and it shows the few shreds of evidence that are out
in the open. One particularly unsettling moment sees a villager offer to take
Kym’s picture on the bridge when she finally gains the courage to revisit it
after immersing herself in accounts that it served as a site for countless
rapes and murders, and was allegedly slick with blood as if a rainstorm hit
Visegrad. She straddles the pockmarked ledge uneasily and the uncomfortably friendly
visitor encourages the postcard perfect view she aims to reject.
Director Jasmila Zbanic, who previously won the Golden Bear
at Berlin for 2006’s Grbavica,
presents Kym’s apology as a performance piece itself by letting the languid,
lyrical tempo of the film mourn for the lost. She include a brief except of Kym’s
stage work as Kym taps a facsimile of the bridge out of dirt onto a stage and
dances along carefully, methodically, and steps far more diligently on its
track than she did the first time. For
Those Who Can Tell No Tales effectively puts at the forefront of its
dramatic energy the complicity one feels with ignorance. Even a mere gesture or
symbolic token of recognition for the past is a step in the right direction.
Most provocatively, though, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales avoids assigning blame even as it
lays a heavy dose of liberal guilt within its message. Kym’s second trip
peppers itself with references to the villainous warlord who manned the hotel,
faced a conviction at The Hague, and received a hero’s welcome after serving
time for his crimes. The film teases out and ultimately rejects confrontation
with the criminal that one assumes is inevitable. Instead, Zbanic makes the
audience look at villagers in a new light and approach them warily because they
may be culpable—even if there only crime is the moral one of turning a blind
eye.
Driven by Vercoe’s heartfelt performance, haunting editing,
arresting cinematography, and a melancholy score, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales is an elegiac tribute to victims of
violence. The film finds its title from the Andric writings that inspiring its
journey, as one elderly villager acknowledges that the dead cannot tell their
own story. The film also turns the phrase back on those who choose to tell no
tales by remaining silent, and Kym’s diligent return to Bosnia is in itself a powerful
statement. For Those Who Can Tell No
Tales leaves much unsaid in its brisk and unsettling seventy-odd minutes, yet
the impact of the film lasts significantly longer.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
For Those Who Can Tell No Tales screens at the University of Ottawa
Human Rights Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 9:00 pm at the Alumni
Auditorium in the Jock Turcot University Centre, 85 University St. at uOttawa.
Admission for all
film screenings is $10 for the general public and $5 for Full time students and
CFI members. Festival passes are also available for $40 (general) and $20
(students/CFI members).
Please visit www.cdp-hrc.uottawa.ca or www.cfi-icf.ca for more information.
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