by Alden Nagel
9/10
Quo Vadis, Aida? is a piercing meditation on the nature of cultural and historical trauma as seen through the eyes of its perpetrators, the intermediary bureaucrats actively participating in the necessarily banality of evil while retaining their individuality, and the victims of such events in such a refreshingly tasteful and tactful light, something that is much needed for such a historically controversial and impactful event as the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995. This July will be its 27th anniversary, and with it a painful reminder of the perverse ethnic cleansing that was allowed to take place then in Srebrenica, resulting in the deaths of 8,372 Muslim Srebrenican men. The film is arguably the most tasteful film made yet about this cruel and tragic moment in modern history, never once taking filmic pleasure in the exploitation or the suffering of the people involved, setting the stage for a truly mature film that refuses to coddle the audience, or is entertaining for entertainment’s sake. It is a much needed one, not only for the sake of historical accuracy but because there has yet to be a film that is as well-produced and intentioned as this one regarding its subject matter.
Quo Vadis, Aida? Is the newest film by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić, having been released in 2020 to much acclaim, going on to win a number of awards, taking home the titles of Best Film and Best Director at the 2021 European Film Awards, Best International Film at The 2021 Spirit Film Awards, and was nominated for 2021 Best International Film at the Academy Awards. This is the tenth film by Žbanić, and so far, her most critically and commercially successful, which considering the nature of the film, is a blessing.
Jasna Đuričić, in her role as the titular Aida, is a mother of two sons, a wife, and a translator for the United Nations in her town of Srebrenica. In the film she has to help translate for military officials to help assuage the refugee crisis at hand, military tactics, and act as a cool-headed intermediary for the parties she’s with. Cool-headed she is throughout, always naturally in her place as a professional, as a fighting mother, and as a strong individual – and she is an absolute force of nature throughout. This is to be expected as she is currently a professor of acting at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, as well as having been a member of the Serbian National Theater from 1990 to 2005. Every scene she is in is genuinely powerful and emotive, whether it’s her frantically running around the claustrophobic U.N. facility most of the film resides at to attempt to solve a life-altering bureaucratic error, or her smoking a cigarette with her family. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful and charged performance I’ve experienced in quite some time from any film; her resting thinking face is still full of such apt concern and nervousness and frustration that I can’t help but feel reeled in by her powerful subtlety of a single look, or of a glance.
Aida is well aware of the moral complexities and questions at play in her situation as a U.N. translator with little power of her own, and yet she uses her voice and her body to make her points known, whether it’s the powerful affirmativeness of her demanding answers from Serbian military officials on if and when they are going to take action, to her later quite literally getting on her knees and begging for mercy for her family with them. She’s aware of the fact that her family, being all men (two sons and her husband) who unlike her do not work in the military or for the United Nations, have the grave fate ahead of them of ethnic cleansing. She makes every moment she has available to her count, just so that her family doesn’t become that dreaded idea of a mere death statistic.
Every single scene adds to the pessimistic, draining experience of watching human rights abuses and war crimes happen in real time, and every actor involved does a fantastically humanizing job of working with the eloquent screenplay that Žbanić has written for them. The cinematography is engaging, utilizing the bright natural light of the Eastern European summer to a surprisingly glossy finish; for a film that revolves around rightful panand war, this is a surprisingly colorful and sharp film, rejecting the color schemes and visual stylings of a typical war film to raise the experience to something grander, flourishing and engaging. It must also be noted just how well Žbanić is at working with large crowds of people, whether directing hundreds of civilians marching against their will down a country road, or thousands of people huddled in the concentration of the U.N. warehouse. It’s an impressive feat, even when you remember that twelve separate production companies from across the European continent came together to make this film for a surprisingly low four million USD. I don’t believe I have yet to see an Eastern European director utilize crowds in such an effective way since Sergie Bondarchuk’s 1966 epic film series adaptation of War And Peace.
My only issue with this film is its music. The official soundtrack to the film, composed by Antoni Łazarkiewicz, only includes three songs, each orchestral mood pieces that don’t stick out much from one another and provide more of an watered down emotive backdrop to what occurs on-screen. Though, there’s not much music in the entire film’s runtime, and this was for the best, as the film heavily benefitted from its historical realism and lack of otherwise impressionistic qualities. While I do believe that the film wouldn’t have been better without the score, I also do not believe it would’ve been considerably (or even noticeably) poorer quality.
Nevertheless, I highly recommend Quo Vadis, Aida? for everything its worth, the historical accuracy and tasteful retelling of the events surrounding the Srebrenican Genocide, the performances that are just about as (if not more) powerful than anything else you’ve seen from the past two years, the perfectly subdued and humanistic cinematography, and the stark realism and grandiosity of the entire production. Perhaps it’s the true human suffering that will get under your skin, or perhaps it’ll just be a single glance.
