Arguably,
Ratko Mladic was a terrible general, but he still won the war. In terms of
military tactics, his strategic sense was highly dubious, but he was lethally efficient
when it came to genocide. Unfortunately, the West still has no stock remedy for
ethnic cleansing, so it often ends up codifying the results, as it did with the
Dayton Accords. “The General” is transparently based on Mladic and he sleeps
just fine at night. Time might be finally running out for the fugitive war
criminal, but do not expect any apologies in Brad Silberling’s An Ordinary Man (trailer here), which opens tomorrow
in New York.
There
is no question The General is modeled on Mladic, right down to the daughter who
tragically committed suicide out of shame for her father’s atrocities. He still
lives rather comfortably in safe houses, thanks to a network of former comrades,
but he must conduct himself in a more secretive manner. Of course, convincing
him of that will be easier said than done.
As
luck would have it, The General finds something to keep him distracted. That
would be Tanja, the previous tenant’s cleaning lady. She has the misfortune of
barging in on The General, who promptly humiliates her, both out of paranoia
and for fun. Yet, she accepts a full-time servant position, because she recognizes
the ethnic cleanser and generally subscribe to his world-view.
Ordinary Man is a very
unsettling film, because it takes you into The General’s unrepentant, fanatical
head-space, without delivering any decisive moral comeuppance to assure us that
all is right with the world after all. To make things even more discomfiting,
Sir Ben Kingsley plays The General with seductively sinister élan. It is easy
to see how he could convince average people to commit horrific crimes. Although
Hera Hilmar is rather naïve and innocent looking as Tanja, she is such an
impressionable empty vessel, it is also rather chilling to see her getting
filled up with hate.
For
the record, Silberling is the same director who helmed Casper, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Land of the Lost. It is nice to know he has a dark side too—and is Ordinary Man ever dark. The Belgrade
locations definitely heighten the ominous vibe. However, these characters and
the environment they inhabit are so amoral, it is hard to get what Silberling
might have hoped audiences would have taken away from the film.
