Harrison's Flowers
"Harrison's Flowers", a gripping account of one woman's desperate yet determined search for her photojournalist husband believed by all his colleagues to have died in the Croatian civil war, is made all the more compelling by the recent kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. While the fictional story is much different than the tragically real one, Pearl's death underscores the danger and horrors war journalists must endure. This film by French filmmaker Elie Chouraqui painstakingly recreates the hell that was Croatia, a grotesque, almost surreal killing field where lives are taken at whim and a journalist is treated with disdain.
Made more than two years ago and winding up its festival tour here in Santa Barbara, the film, to be released this month by Universal Focus, hits theaters at a propitious moment. Propelled by a thoroughly convincing performance by Andie MacDowell, in a role that finds her character performing highly unlikely deeds, "Harrison's Flowers" should do well with adult viewers in and possibly beyond art house venues.
MacDowell and David Strathairn play married journalists, both of whom work at Newsweek in New York. With two young children needing his attention, Strathairn's prize-winning photojournalist asks his boss (Alun Armstrong) to retire him from war coverage. However, one last assignment proves, fatefully, to be just that. Off to Croatia in 1991, before the world has ever heard of "ethnic cleansing," he disappears in a building that collapses and is presumed dead.
Because there is no body, MacDowell insists her husband is not dead. Despite the fact her children have lost their dad and, by her actions, may lose their mother as well, MacDowell sets off for Yugoslavia. The reason: She thinks she has seen her husband in news footage she has tape-recorded from TV.
She sneaks across the border from Austria. On her first day, a companion gets brutally slain and she would have been raped but combat prevents a soldier from finishing his attack. Rather fortuitously -- you don't want to examine this coincidence too closely -- she is discovered by a group of fellow journalists. Half dead, she nevertheless convinces two colleagues of her husband, a hot-headed American (Adrien Brody) and an Irish veteran (Brendan Gleeson), to help her through a terrifying human hell to a hospital where she believes she will find her husband.
Events move swiftly along with all the characters in constant jeopardy. As with such current war films as "We Were Soldiers" and "Black Hawk Down", Chouraqui achieves a documentarylike reality in his combat scenes, only in this instance, a militia is at war with its own population.
The script by Chouraqui, Didier Le Pecheur, Isabel Ellsen and Michael Katims never fully motivates the two men's decision to help the ruthlessly single-minded MacDowell. Indeed, Brody didn't even get along with her husband. He does mutter something about always wanting to be a Boy Scout. And Gleeson simply declares he doesn't want his friendly rival to get a shot that he doesn't have.
The movie undergoes a curious shift in point of view or, to be accurate, in narrative strategy about three-quarters of the way through when a New York colleague of her husband's (Elias Koteas) mysteriously materializes in the war zone. At this point, his voice-over narration begins to fill in the gaps. But this is a voice you haven't heard before, and it strikes an odd note, smacking of a last-minute decision made in postproduction.
Top marks to go cinematographer Nicola Pecorini and production designer Giantito Burchiellaro for evoking the dark, smoky war zone, extending through villages and a nightmarish countryside, all within a 90-mile radius of Prague. Even the Newsweek magazine newsroom and the family's New Jersey home were created in the Czech Republic.
HARRISON'S FLOWERS
Universal Focus
7 Films Cinema/StudioCanal/France 2 Cinema
with the participation of Canal Plus
Producer/director: Elie Chouraqui
Writers: Elie Chouraqui, Didier Le Pecheur, Isabel Ellsen, Michael Katims
Director of photography: Nicola Pecorini
Production designer: Giantito Burchiellaro
Music: Cliff Eidelman
Editor: Jacques Witta
Color/stereo
Cast:
Sarah Lloyd: Andie MacDowell
Yeager: Elias Koteas
Stevenson: Brendan Gleeson
Kyle: Adrien Brody
Harrison Lloyd: David Strathairn
Samuel Brubeck: Alun Armstrong
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Made more than two years ago and winding up its festival tour here in Santa Barbara, the film, to be released this month by Universal Focus, hits theaters at a propitious moment. Propelled by a thoroughly convincing performance by Andie MacDowell, in a role that finds her character performing highly unlikely deeds, "Harrison's Flowers" should do well with adult viewers in and possibly beyond art house venues.
MacDowell and David Strathairn play married journalists, both of whom work at Newsweek in New York. With two young children needing his attention, Strathairn's prize-winning photojournalist asks his boss (Alun Armstrong) to retire him from war coverage. However, one last assignment proves, fatefully, to be just that. Off to Croatia in 1991, before the world has ever heard of "ethnic cleansing," he disappears in a building that collapses and is presumed dead.
Because there is no body, MacDowell insists her husband is not dead. Despite the fact her children have lost their dad and, by her actions, may lose their mother as well, MacDowell sets off for Yugoslavia. The reason: She thinks she has seen her husband in news footage she has tape-recorded from TV.
She sneaks across the border from Austria. On her first day, a companion gets brutally slain and she would have been raped but combat prevents a soldier from finishing his attack. Rather fortuitously -- you don't want to examine this coincidence too closely -- she is discovered by a group of fellow journalists. Half dead, she nevertheless convinces two colleagues of her husband, a hot-headed American (Adrien Brody) and an Irish veteran (Brendan Gleeson), to help her through a terrifying human hell to a hospital where she believes she will find her husband.
Events move swiftly along with all the characters in constant jeopardy. As with such current war films as "We Were Soldiers" and "Black Hawk Down", Chouraqui achieves a documentarylike reality in his combat scenes, only in this instance, a militia is at war with its own population.
The script by Chouraqui, Didier Le Pecheur, Isabel Ellsen and Michael Katims never fully motivates the two men's decision to help the ruthlessly single-minded MacDowell. Indeed, Brody didn't even get along with her husband. He does mutter something about always wanting to be a Boy Scout. And Gleeson simply declares he doesn't want his friendly rival to get a shot that he doesn't have.
The movie undergoes a curious shift in point of view or, to be accurate, in narrative strategy about three-quarters of the way through when a New York colleague of her husband's (Elias Koteas) mysteriously materializes in the war zone. At this point, his voice-over narration begins to fill in the gaps. But this is a voice you haven't heard before, and it strikes an odd note, smacking of a last-minute decision made in postproduction.
Top marks to go cinematographer Nicola Pecorini and production designer Giantito Burchiellaro for evoking the dark, smoky war zone, extending through villages and a nightmarish countryside, all within a 90-mile radius of Prague. Even the Newsweek magazine newsroom and the family's New Jersey home were created in the Czech Republic.
HARRISON'S FLOWERS
Universal Focus
7 Films Cinema/StudioCanal/France 2 Cinema
with the participation of Canal Plus
Producer/director: Elie Chouraqui
Writers: Elie Chouraqui, Didier Le Pecheur, Isabel Ellsen, Michael Katims
Director of photography: Nicola Pecorini
Production designer: Giantito Burchiellaro
Music: Cliff Eidelman
Editor: Jacques Witta
Color/stereo
Cast:
Sarah Lloyd: Andie MacDowell
Yeager: Elias Koteas
Stevenson: Brendan Gleeson
Kyle: Adrien Brody
Harrison Lloyd: David Strathairn
Samuel Brubeck: Alun Armstrong
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 3/4/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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