Harrison's
Flowers, directed by Elie Chouraqui, ups the ante
on the reality of ethnic cleansing over earlier efforts, notably
Savior (1998) and
Behind Enemy Lines
(2001). Based on the novel Le Diable a l'Avantage by
Isabel Ellsen, the film begins in New Jersey on October 9,
1991. We become acquainted with Harrison Lloyd (played by
David Strathairn), his wife Susan (played by Andie MacDowell),
and his two adorable children. In his greenhouse, Harrison
tends tropical plants, a hobby that gives him peace of mind
from his career as a photojournalist, for which he won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1989. Next, Susan enters the Newsweek office in New
York, where the managing editor (played by Alun Armstrong)
and the rest of the staff are baffled by what they see and
hear on CNN from Yugoslavia; he refers to the events as mere
"ethnic skirmishes," an indictment of the way the
press was then uninformed by events well known to Europeans,
who were then awaiting the Americans to exert leadership.
At lunch Harrison informs his boss that he wants to quit and
spend more time with his family. His boss agrees, but after
one more assignment--the war in Croatia. Before he goes, he
presents the Pulitzer Prize in photojournalism for 1991 to
Yeager Pollack (played by Elias Koteas), who filmed the man
who stopped tanks from entering Tiananmen Square. In the men's
room, however, Kyle Morris (played by Adrien Brody) chides
Harrison for his earlier easy award that involved few risks.
After arriving in Croatia, Harrison sends back shocking photos,
and one night Susan receives a call in the middle of the night
with no discernible voice. The next morning, the Newsweek
staff informs her that Harrison died from a bomb blast in
a building in Vukovar. Refusing to believe the account, based
on her telephone call, on November 7, 1991, she arrives at
the airport in Graz, Austria, and rents a car, destination
Vukovar; her mission could be called Saving Photojournalist
Harrison. Entering an unmanned frontier, she soon finds herself
in the middle of a battle; a tank totals her car, and a soldier
begins to rape her when his commanding officer orders him
back to the fighting. Shocked, she collapses on the ground
near the car and is presumed dead as Croatian troops gain
control of the area, accompanied by several photojournalists,
including Morris, who recognizes Susan, expresses indignation
at her presence in a war zone, but takes care of her until
she recovers from shock and discloses her mission. Although
Morris attempts to get Susan to turn back, he changes his
mind on realizing that her obsessive pursuit can be a ticket
to the most exciting photojournalism of the war, and he heads
for Vukovar with her. En route there are many scenes of murdered
older people, women, and children, but none so stark as the
ongoing ethnic cleansing that they observe first hand on arriving
in Vukovar. Susan does indeed find Harrison, who is unable
to speak due to the post-traumatic stress of nearly dying
from a bomb blast, and the reunited couple returns to the
United States. One year later, Harrison snaps out of his trance,
and Morris's voiceover at the end informs us that the couple
moved to St. Louis, where Harrison spends his time photographing
flowers in his new greenhouse. Graphic scenes expose the savage
manner in which Serb troops fought, taking no prisoners and
raping women and even children. The film is dedicated to the
more than forty courageous journalists who lost their lives
while trying to get the story out. The film Savior,
however, more accurately shows that the indignities were committed
on both sides. At one point Morris says that the term "ethnic
cleansing" was first used to describe the way Serbs sought
a final solution against Croatia, which was seceding from
Yugoslavia, but in fact the first use of the term was in 1989,
when the Kosovars began a policy of ethnic extermination of
Serbs to make the province ethnically pure. Indeed, the action
of the Kosovars gave Slobodan Milosevich an opportunity to
organize mass demonstrations in Belgrade that brought him
to power. The rest, dramatically presented in the superb Discovery
Channel documentary Yugoslavia (1999), is history.
MH
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