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ETHNIC
CLEANSING BEFORE YOUR EYES IN HARRISON'S FLOWERS
 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.
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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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