Once there was relatively orderly and mostly agreeable Eastern European nation called Yugoslavia. Its people were known to be friendly to strangers–if not always to each other–and strong enough to endure both the ravages of fascism and failures of communism.
In the last decade, however, just as many of its neighbors were beginning to taste freedom for the first time in 50 years, this lovely patch of land fell prey to the curse of nationalism, and long-festering wounds opened to the polluted air of intolerance and fear.
Now, many of those same strangers have returned with guns drawn to patrol the nation’s tortured streets. Old friends are at each other’s throats and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Although Jasmin Dizdar has set “Beautiful People” in London, his debut film is informed by the chaos that has held his former homeland in its grip for nearly a decade.
“The Balkans are like these tectonic plates, where civilizations and cultures meet, and the earthquake comes when you least expect it,” said Dizdar, who studied film in Prague in the mid-’80s and moved to England with his British girlfriend before Yugoslavia began splitting apart at the seams. “I’m a Bosnian Muslim. I always saw myself as a Yugoslav, but suddenly that went out the window, and I became a Bosnian Muslim.
“Yes, that’s what I am, but I grew up with a completely different idea. Now, how can someone come and take away that identity? I’m a nationalized British citizen, but was formed by the former Yugoslavia.”
The word “former” haunts the immigrant characters in “Beautiful People,” as they struggle to assimilate into the far-less-passionate culture of the new home, and, yet, maintain a sense of identity and pride. As their personal crises intertwine with those of their neighbors and British hosts, Dizdar finds the humanity that keeps all of us moving toward a common goal.
The idea for this inventive film–which was honored at last year’s Cannes Film Festival with the Prix Un Certain Regard–came when a lonely and alienated Dizdar witnessed a fistfight on a London bus.
“Here I was, in the middle London, surrounded by strangers, and all around me the world was collapsing. … One side of Europe was uniting, while the other was dividing,” recalled the tall 38-year-old writer-director, who was raised in a town 70 miles north of Sarajevo. “I was sitting in the bus with these two teenagers who were fighting each other, in front of me.”
The fight, he said, “caused something to resonate inside of me, and I went home and started writing this story. It began spewing out of me. I wanted to know all about those people.”
In “Beautiful People,” Dizdar re-imagines the two young combatants as former neighbors and friends–one a Bosnian Serb, the other an ethnic Croatian–whose paths cross on the bus and who renew their feud in the aisle. Bloody and battered, they chase each other around the streets of London, before winding up in a hospital ward.
They are among 20 principal characters who arrive at their own personal crossroads at about the same moment in 1993. The others include a trio of soccer hooligans, one of whom pays an unexpected visit to Bosnia; a BBC war correspondent, his unhappy wife and their nutty twins; a doctor who tries to convince a Bosnian rape victim not to abort the baby she’s carrying; and the family of a Tory politician who suddenly is forced to accept a son-in-law who can barely speak English.
That’s a lot for any one movie to contain, but Dizdar–whose resume was limited to short films, a BBC radio project and book about Milos Forman–manages to keep all the subplots flowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, he’s elicited some pretty terrific performances from a group of veteran British actors who–with the exception of Charlotte Coleman, from “Four Weddings and a Funeral”–are largely unknown here.
Although he tries to leaven the drama of “Beautiful People” with some outrageous humor typical of the Yugoslav cinema, much of the picture packs a heavy emotional wallop.
“All of these people are at a crossroads and have to make important decisions, all at once,” he said. “I wanted to take those moments and bang them against each other, because, ultimately, that’s also what united them. There were certain feelings I couldn’t keep down.
“Although you have this sweet, happy couple–Portia and Pero–he can’t help himself when he points to a map of the Balkans and says, `My former mother, my former father … my former me.’ She says, `You’re here now. Why do you consider yourself “former”?’ But it’s something he can’t explain.”
Somehow, Dizdar manages not to take sides in the movie. Dizdar makes his points in less obvious ways. The story of the disintegration of Yugoslavia is revealed in private moments.
“When I was in Prague, where I lived for 5 years and met my wife, Hilary, I went to a friend’s home and he was able to show me a family tree that went back to 1500,” he said. “I was in tears almost, because I realized I didn’t know anything about my grandfather. My father was an orphan, because both of his parents were killed by fascists in World War II.
“The nations were constantly shifted. … Everyone went somewhere else to work, and, 20 years later, things would be completely different. That’s the story of my country.”
The title, “Beautiful People,” derives from Dizdar’s feeling that Europe in the ’90s isn’t that dissimilar to the one that existed in 1968, “when walls were coming down and there was confusion about what was going to happen next. “I like to start with something intimate and have it eventually become global. … I wanted to bring in that freewheeling spirit of existentialism that comes from people living on the edge.”
