But this only refers to the contents of the movie, not its quality. Danis Tanovic won the Oscar for Best Foreign Langue Film 2001 for "No Man's Land", about Amélie for example, back when he was just in his early 30s and here, over 10 years later he displays "An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker". Don't worry though. It's not 75 monotonous minutes of a man collection garbage. Actually there's only two scenes, one on his own, one with his colleagues and they're both pretty good in terms of atmosphere and context. The story is set in Bosnia, during wintertime and we see a family (husband, wife, two daughters) who doesn't have much, but is still relatively happy with their life.
Things take a turn for the worse when the mother has a miscarriage and, as she has no insurance, we witness for a long time, how they desperately try to get doctors to remove the dead child while her health constantly deteriorates. The scenes where the father is begging to the nurses and doctors is particularly heartbreaking. He even offers interest payment which would take him months to get the money together if they could operate his wife immediately, but they refuse as the head physician refuses. So they're definitely not trying to cheat, they just want to save the mother's life. At one point, it's mentioned how the father fought in the war, but has received to securities or anything afterward and that's how he ended up collection iron in order to make a living. Finally, with some kind of insurance fraud, they still get to save the woman's life. Thankfully the people in Bosnia stick together support each other in order to have access to the most basic things that are pretty much taken for granted in my country Germany, for example. It's so strange to see health insurance by the government non-existent in other countries and it is really shocking. The film has many moving scenes, like when he and the two girls wait outside for their mother, or how he cries that God always punishes the poor ones.
When they come back home and the mother had her operation, the next troubles arise already (yep torture porn alert) as it's winter, snow everywhere and the electricians where there and pulled off electricity as they didn't pay for it for a while. When it's switched back on shortly after and the mother says something like it's back on and we see the girls smiling because they wouldn't have to freeze anymore and can watch their cartoons again in their TV with terrible quality. Very touching scene and it really made me think how simple things and pleasures can make such a difference in many regions of the world. It's something we, in the richer countries, tend to forget more and more unfortunately in the age of kitsch and waste.
All in all, it's a film I recommend very much. It's almost a documentary (the daughters are really the lead actor's daughters judging from the name) and everybody did a fine job given they've never acted in a film before. It felt so real. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it wasn't, judging from how nobody ever looked into the camera, the kids or the doctors, nurses etc. for example. This film was selected as submission to the Oscars, but I don't think it will appeal to the Academy as much as Tanovic's previous work and as much as it did to me. Also, I've seen a couple other very good foreign films already that were submitted (Chile, Germany, Saudi-Arabia, Denmark), so competition seems stiff this year and I'd be quite surprised if it gets nominated. It's a very intriguing study of society though and I recommend it a lot.
Things take a turn for the worse when the mother has a miscarriage and, as she has no insurance, we witness for a long time, how they desperately try to get doctors to remove the dead child while her health constantly deteriorates. The scenes where the father is begging to the nurses and doctors is particularly heartbreaking. He even offers interest payment which would take him months to get the money together if they could operate his wife immediately, but they refuse as the head physician refuses. So they're definitely not trying to cheat, they just want to save the mother's life. At one point, it's mentioned how the father fought in the war, but has received to securities or anything afterward and that's how he ended up collection iron in order to make a living. Finally, with some kind of insurance fraud, they still get to save the woman's life. Thankfully the people in Bosnia stick together support each other in order to have access to the most basic things that are pretty much taken for granted in my country Germany, for example. It's so strange to see health insurance by the government non-existent in other countries and it is really shocking. The film has many moving scenes, like when he and the two girls wait outside for their mother, or how he cries that God always punishes the poor ones.
When they come back home and the mother had her operation, the next troubles arise already (yep torture porn alert) as it's winter, snow everywhere and the electricians where there and pulled off electricity as they didn't pay for it for a while. When it's switched back on shortly after and the mother says something like it's back on and we see the girls smiling because they wouldn't have to freeze anymore and can watch their cartoons again in their TV with terrible quality. Very touching scene and it really made me think how simple things and pleasures can make such a difference in many regions of the world. It's something we, in the richer countries, tend to forget more and more unfortunately in the age of kitsch and waste.
All in all, it's a film I recommend very much. It's almost a documentary (the daughters are really the lead actor's daughters judging from the name) and everybody did a fine job given they've never acted in a film before. It felt so real. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it wasn't, judging from how nobody ever looked into the camera, the kids or the doctors, nurses etc. for example. This film was selected as submission to the Oscars, but I don't think it will appeal to the Academy as much as Tanovic's previous work and as much as it did to me. Also, I've seen a couple other very good foreign films already that were submitted (Chile, Germany, Saudi-Arabia, Denmark), so competition seems stiff this year and I'd be quite surprised if it gets nominated. It's a very intriguing study of society though and I recommend it a lot.