This is no comedy!!!!

you're not keen on the history or events surrounding the balkan war... but then you gripe that you don't understand the humour?

I'm amazed you haven't complained about not understanding Serbo-Croat!!!

The film is laced with humour throughout... the Britsh officer's totty in her pin stripe and UN helmet. The fact the NOBODY speaks French and almost EVERYBODY speaks English - its a knock back of the constant refrain from France that they are no longer the world's "Lingua Franca" (consider the origins and meaning of that term...).

Not all humour marches up in the street during daylight and hits you over the head with a sledgehammer! Or or you the type that needs canned laughter to know when someone's told a joke?

watch the trailer, and you will see that they were cleary marketing this as a type of comedy

first of all, the language spoken in the movie is not serbo-croatian. its bosnian. odd as it may seem, such a language exists. the serbo-croatian is the oficial language of the former yugoslavia. but the serbs never named it serbo croatian, they named it serbian, just as the croats named it croatian. the diference between those two and the bosnian is minor, but still every man holds to its legacy to its culture, and a language is one of the most important parts of a culture, a national identity.
second thing, this movie is a serious movie, about a serious subject, and everything it has tried to say is serious. but it has also tried to integrate the typical balcan atmosphere in the movie, and that is where all the balcan black humor comes from. it is of course hard to understand for a man who for one doesn´t understand the language, nor the people. but for some it was the only way to stay sane in the insane situation those people found themselves in. to them some scenes could seem extremely funny (like the scene where two soldiers are arguing "who started the war?").
at the end, it is supose to show many things, things about war, about the people in war, about the world is doing to stop such things... maybe a laugh or two just to show that we survived it all and still are capable of laughing to those things.



If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.