Storm (2009)
It is hard for people outside of the United Nations crimes courts to know quite how that world feels from the inside. I think it's too foreign, in every way, to know. And Hollywood tends to approach this kind of situation with heightened drama, exaggerated flair, darker darks and more romantic romances. I'm not a U.N. insider, but this isn't Hollywood and "Storm" feels as close to getting to the reality of that world as you can get in a fictional milieu. That's the brilliance of the filmmakers, withholding and avoiding undue drama but also making the characters complex and interesting.
Of course, restraint isn't always the way to engross your audience, and "Storm" tends to be interesting all along. It feels important and principled, a lot like its characters. This might help it last as a classic of some sort, gaining over time some of the shine it doesn't quite have now. But there is also the issue of why, exactly, the victims of war atrocities in the Bosnian conflict were forgotten by most of the world in the years after the war ended. From an American point of view, Yugoslavia had always seemed far away, not quite Europe, not quite Asia, becoming a mix of newly minted countries from the dissolution of a big one that had always remained isolated internationally. But the Europeans understand one of their own, and if this movie is right, it seems that Bosnia (and Serbia et al) were largely forgotten once the actual war was over. "Storm" is a particularly European approach to the issue, a Danish film overall, but a multi-culti multi-country production that fits its subject perfectly.
This movie is about a kind of dogged heroism that is part of the glory, really (no joke) of the United Nations. You come to appreciate the struggling, idealist foreign service and civil rights work that goes on at the lower levels of the U.N. completely out of sight, but critically important. Here the fight is led by a discouraged mid-career lawyer played by Kerry Fox with something approaching perfection. Her character is so everyday (for a high powered lawyer), you sometimes forget that the actress is pulling it off so well. The second lead comes in only halfway through, the equally brilliant Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca, who is a victim being coaxed into testifying, even though it is putting her life and her family in mortal danger.
Not many movies get made about this world in part because it's a little dry. There are no shootouts or bombs, just suspicious glares, sudden backroom decisions. But it's an important movie, at least it was for me, giving me just a small insight into that world, and into the social wreckage of the Bosnian war. If it had been given more drama, it would have acquired more hype, and director Hans-Christian Schmid deserves a bow for his steadfastness.
In researching a little, I found this review which I thought was really well written, you might also enjoy: http://www.filmcritic.com/reviews/2009/storm/
Or just see the darned movie.
