‘Quo Vadis, Aida?,’ Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Oscar entry, grippingly recounts a 1995 tragedy
“Quo Vadis, Aida?” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.
In “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Jasmila Zbanic’s swift and shattering movie about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a woman climbs onto a small structure and stares out over a barbed-wire fence into a sea of weary bodies and frightened faces. This is Aida (Jasna Duricic), and she’s searching for some of her family members, but as the camera pans across the crowd, echoing her desperate gaze, the enormity of the tragedy at hand comes into focus.
It’s not the last time Aida will experience this elevated vantage, sometimes with a megaphone in hand as she translates instructions and information for her fellow refugees. She knows her words are worthless, a mix of vague reassurances and outright lies; she also knows that, under the circumstances, hearing the truth might be just as futile.
Crowd shots in wartime movies, from “Gone With the Wind” to more recent digital-extra spectaculars, run the risk of numbing the viewer, of overwhelming us with so many heartrending details that they turn mass suffering into abstraction. But the details somehow never blur in “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which manages to hold background and foreground in unsettling balance for 102 taut, terrifying minutes.
Zbanic, who wrote and directed the film (and just earned a British Film Academy nomination for best director), doesn’t take a panoramic approach. She keeps her focus on Aida, a Srebrenica schoolteacher turned United Nations interpreter working on behalf of a town she suspects is doomed and trying to spare her family the same fate. But the bigger picture never recedes into the smaller one. As Aida races the clock, it becomes clear that her family’s survival, if it comes to pass, will be a rare and privileged exception.
The story opens in July 1995 in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, declared a demilitarized safe zone by Dutch U.N. peacekeepers. Zbanic doesn’t waste time on preamble; the war has been raging for three years, and Aida is our lone guide to the horrors that have befallen and will befall her hometown. It’s through her eyes and her words, as she facilitates anxious talks between the town’s mayor and its designated protectors - that we learn that the badly outnumbered U.N. forces will be hard-pressed to keep the Serbian army from overrunning Srebrenica.
Soon thousands of civilians have retreated to the nearby U.N. base, where some manage to take refuge inside while others are left standing behind that barbed-wire fence, waiting and begging to be let in before the Serbs arrive. Aida, for
her part, darts around inside and outside and back again, translating on behalf of wounded patients one minute and pleading with U.N. officials the next, desperate to ensure the safety of her husband, Nihad (Izudin Bajrovic), and their sons, Hamdija (Boris Ler) and Sejo (Dino Bajrovic). From time to time the tension breaks, mainly during a long night of waiting, as Aida tenderly swaps stories with a guard and also speaks to her family, with insistent optimism, about happier days to come.
But these are rare respites amid the tumult. Aida’s moral imperative, her need to do as much as she can in an impossible situation, finds powerful expression in her relentless forward momentum and the corresponding speed and agility of Zbanic’s filmmaking. Duricic,
in a performance of extraordinary physical and emotional endurance, emphasizes Aida’s sharp reflexes, her fierce intelligence and equally fierce maternal instinct. She’s initially reassured that the Serbian troops wouldn’t dare penetrate U.N. barriers, but we see the heightened urgency in her step and the mounting terror in her eyes as these and other illusions begin to crumble.
Christine A. Maier’s camera hurtles alongside her as she navigates this ostensible safe house, using her official badge to cut corners and cross boundaries. The title’s invocation of the Latin phrase “quo vadis?” (“Where are you going?”) - a reference to the apostle Peter’s flight from crucifixion in Rome - here feels like a moral inquiry, both sympathetic and reproachful, directed at Aida’s conscience. Her concern for her family above all else is an entirely human reaction, to be expected from anyone in her shoes. But even as it acknowledges this, the movie, sharply edited by Jaroslaw Kaminski, keeps feeding us sidelong glimpses of those for whom Aida can do nothing. We see a woman she knows begging for help as she runs past; people squatting to relieve themselves in the corner; hungry hands grasping at loaves of bread and boxes of Toblerones being passed out by Serbian troops.
Those troops are under the command of the notorious general Ratko Mladic (Boris Isakovi’c), first shown striding through the abandoned streets of Srebrenica before later calling for a sham negotiation with town representatives. (Nihad, a school principal, is named one of those representatives, as part of Aida’s increasingly desperate tactics to save him.) The movie is, among other things, a coolly excoriating assessment of the U.N.’s failure to intervene and keep the Serbian army at bay - a failure born not just of insufficient firepower, but also of geopolitical pressures hovering beyond the scope of the frame. The extent of their capitulation becomes clear once Mladic’s troops, working at the direction of Joka (a terrifying Emir Hadzihafizbegovic), begin separating civilians by gender and herding them onto buses.
You have questions. I have some answers.
Q: Are Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies and Josh Mankiewicz of “Dateline NBC” distant cousins?
A: No. They are brothers, with Josh the elder. They are the sons of Frank Mankiewicz, the journalist, political operator and former president of NPR; Frank died in 2014. For those of you aware of other celebrities named Mankiewicz, Frank was the son of Herman Mankiewicz, famous as co-writer of “Citizen Kane” with Orson Welles; Herman was played by Gary Oldman in the recent movie “Mank.” Herman’s brother Joseph was another Hollywood legend, whose credits include writing and directing the classic “All About Eve.”
Q: How could CBS cancel “Mom”? It is such a good show.
A: “Mom” is also a show that, as I mentioned awhile back, lost a major player before this season. Anna Faris, who played Christy, departed, reportedly to pursue other opportunities.
The remaining cast, headed by the marvelous Allison Janney, is still strong. And, according to some reports, the ratings remained good even with some slippage post-Faris. But there may have been other factors at work.
Eight seasons is a pretty good run for a series and costs such as salaries tend to rise when shows last long. According to Deadline.com, Janney’s contract was done after this season, so the show may have been facing
a tough negotiation - or simply Janney deciding to move on. At the same time, Deadline noted, the show’s deal with CBS runs out at the end of this season, adding more dealing to be done. And who knows how that would have worked out? For now, then, enjoy the remaining episodes, which will end with a series finale on May 6.
Q: I seem to remember in the first few seasons of “Black-ish”, that the character of Rainbow was a cardiologist. Now they say she is an anesthesiologist. Am I correct or not?
A: I have to say “not.” In the third episode of the first season, when Rainbow takes Diane to her workplace, we see that she is an anesthesiologist.
Q: Why was Redd Foxx absent “in St. Louis” so much late in the third season of “Sanford and Son” and early in the fourth?
A: Foxx was in a dispute with the show. GetTV, which carries “Sanford” reruns, says Foxx claimed health issues in walking off during season three but in fact was looking for a bigger payday. “Foxx sought a 25% ownership stake in the series, and Tandem Productions fought back with a $10 million lawsuit,” the website says. “The dispute was resolved in June of 1974, with Foxx receiving $25,000 per-episode, plus 25% of the producers’ net profits. Although Foxx was still absent for production of the first three shows of season four, NBC aired his return as the season premiere.” Foxx ended up leaving the show permanently after six seasons when he signed a deal for a variety show on ABC.
Q: Did the credits for “Young Sheldon” ever have him afraid of a tumbleweed?
A: Yes. The series has varied its title sequence over the years, and the tumbleweed made its debut in the fourth episode of the first season.
Q: I would like to get a DVD of the movie “Road House,” a black-and-white film with Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino. I thought you might help.
A: It can be tricky finding that 1948 movie, especially because searches of “Road House” tend to direct folks to the Patrick Swayze film of the same name. Still, a DVD of the Wilde/Widmark film - an admired example of film noir was released in 2008 and can be found on Amazon.com. (Search Road House Widmark to skip Swayze). Prices start at about $14 for used copies, much more for new. And there’s a Blu-ray release if you have that format.
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