Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

A very powerful film. One of the best war/anti-war films I can remember, and there are a lot of them. Worth watching if only for a fantasy scene resembling a music video when over a rock song that translates essentially as "their dancing to rock and roll in jugoslavia and everything is going down the hole."

Mix of starkly realistic war footage and very black comedy. Essential for anyone who wants to understand any of the Balkan wars.

I've seen it again today. I've seen it ten years ago when it first came out. On a 17x copied VHS bootleg tape, and now on DVD. Without going into details, I can only say this is one of the movies that I've seen many times and each time I see it it strikes me as the best of the best. It's multi layered and highly symbolic at times, due to that, the only ones to understand it fully are people that have a good understanding of the Balkan wars and/or the mentality of the characters. Some see it as pro-Serbian propaganda, other see it as anti-Serbian. And that alone makes it worth watching for me. Anyways, it's a chilling and wonderful masterpiece. Sad, bleak, darkly humorous at times but very very VERY good.

Don't let the low marks take you away from this masterpiece - look at stars assignment, and you will get the picture.

If you expect black and white war movie, forget it. For me, this is by far most objective movie about civil war(s) in ex-Yugoslavia, better then Bosnian (good) "No man's land" and Macedonian (masterpiece) "Before the rain". At the beginning, you will see Serbs burning villages (that explain title of movie) and killing people, but, from middle to end, you will see completely same behavior done by Bosnian Muslims. Brilliance of this movie is because it shows you why this war was so bloody and why it is so hard to have peace and reconciliation after all. Every killing, every murder, has story behind, and movie gather them all. You have pure communist (Bata Zivojinovic) against his fellow officer, you have two best friends (Nikola Bjelogrlic - Bosnian Serb, Nikola Pejakovic - Bosnian Muslim) against each other, you have urban freaks, you have junkies, you have educated teacher, you have everything you need. Every one of them has his own reason to be there, but at the end, they all end completely empty, with only pure hate inside.

I suppose that some things from movie will be hard to get if you are not from Balkan. For example, Index (that's name of the bend) song that Nikola Kojo sing using gun as mice, was one of the greatest classics in ex-Yu (and lyrics fit the scene perfectly: "And tonight, if she listen, let her hear the pain..."). Some sentences are very hard to translate. For example, in joke scene, when Zoran Cvijanovic (junkie) want to insult Bosnian Muslim soldiers, he tell them joke that begins with "Check this out: Blonde, I mean Fata the Blonde, come to party..." Fata is Muslim name, but is obvious that joke was first intended as joke abound blonde woman, but he upgraded it in the moment. Also, in one scene you can see Serbian skinheads that are kicking traffic table with "Zagreb" (Croatian capital) written on it. Two are holding the table, one is hitting it by the head, and they are all singing "We f*cked Tajci! We f*cked Tajci!" Tajci was ex-Yu singer from Croatia that represented country on Eurovision competition few years before war started. Also, most of the scenes are extremely dark and funny at the same time, but that's Serbian humor in general.

Even without this small hints, movie still remain pure classic, to me comparable only with "Apocalypse now" and "Platoon" by its objectivity. It is very fast movie, easy to watch and hard to understand, as Balkan always was. I hope you will enjoy.

This is one of the best movies of ex-Yugoslav cinematography. Not 100% understandable for people who do not know anything about a civil war in ex-Yugoslavia, but this movie is truly a work of genius. This movie can make you laugh an cry in the same time. It's a shame this movie didn't get nominees for Oscar because the country was under sanctions by USA. For every single man, this movie is must have and must see. People of USA can see in this movie what did their government do to Yugoslavia. The war started because of USA and so did many more after the Yuglosavia Civil War. Now, as you can see, USA is destroying Serbia for no reason! After Kosovo crisis we will unfortunately have one more "Pretty Villages Pretty Flame"...

An extraordinary film in the best tradition of Serbian cinematography which itself has a proved track record stretching all the way back to and throughout the Yugoslav era, and the one that far outweights contributions from other former YU regions. It's a big shame that non-Serbian speaking viewers cannot completely appreciate the spark and the breeziness of the dialogue, although the English subtitled translation is generally quite dextrous and does the best it can, by and large getting it right amidst very strong (sometimes amusingly so) language. The acting too is superb - a brilliant episode by Petar Bozovic (Sloba), a great turn from the main lead (Dragan Bjelogrlic, as Milan) - and a truly moving performance by Zoran Cvijanovic (Speedy, the self proclaimed 'unreformed drug addict currently getting anti drug war group therapy'). All in all, a group of very talented actors of a certain generation at work, and a tough and gritty piece of film making, which manages to be ominously dark (the amusement park flashback sequences are hauntingly disturbing), but also nostalgic, clinically sobering and mordantly humorous at the same time, whilst steering clear of pro-Serbian propaganda, opting instead, as another user correctly pointed out, for a sort-of-pro-Yugoslav one.

Quite revealing is an exchange between Velja (Nikola Kojo) and Gvozden (Velimir-Bata Zivojinovic, a veteran and a favourite of Serbian cinema in a routinely poignant performance) - halfway through the film - a few succinct lines spoken there which may offer a clue as to what Yugoslavia as a country was - or might have been - all about; and why events that ensued during the nineties actually took place. Great stuff, still going strong ten years on.