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Beautiful People
UK 1999
Reviewed by Stella Bruzzi
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London. The lives of numerous characters intersect. Two Bosnian men - one Serb, the other Croat - fight and end up in adjacent hospital beds. Griffin prepares to go to Rotterdam for the England-Holland 1994 World Cup qualifier. Doctor Mouldy is left by his wife. Jerry, a BBC correspondent, is leaving for Bosnia. Pero, another Bosnian refugee, is run over and put on the same ward as the Croat, the Serb and a Welsh nationalist. There he meets Portia, a doctor and daughter of a Tory MP. Elsewhere in the hospital, a Bosnian woman begs Mouldy to abort her child, the result of her being raped by soldiers. After the birth, she and her husband bond with their daughter and name her Chaos. After England loses (2-0), Griffin and his two junkie mates shoot up in a Rotterdam pub toilet. At the airport they become separated. Griffin collapses on a UN military aircraft pallet and is parachuted into Bosnia, where he is caught in a mortar attack. At a UN field hospital he provides heroin for a leg amputation which Jerry is filming.
In London, a reformed Griffin returns home with a Bosnian boy blinded during the attack. Jerry also returns, shot in the leg and suffering from 'Bosnia syndrome'. Mouldy, now without his two sons, invites baby Chaos' parents to stay with him. Jerry wants his leg amputated; a sanitised version of his Bosnian report is broadcast and Griffin, now a hero, is reconciled with his parents. Griffin takes the blind boy to a pub where another England match is on and meets his old friends. The police arrest Pero's African neighbour. Pero marries Portia.
Review
Beautiful People's broad intention is to marry romance and politics - both literally and metaphorically, if one considers its concluding wedding. The political contextualisation of its characters within the ethnic conflicts of the former Yugoslavia saves Beautiful People from seeming too whimsical, although Jasmin Dizdar's film remains idiosyncratically devoid of cynicism (as its title suggests), but also of real bite. Partly this stems from the film's schematic take on ethnic conflict, and partly from its breathlessly optimistic denouement during which Mouldy says, "It doesn't take much to make life beautiful," and one is led (almost) to believe him. A nurse tells her turbulent ward that they have come to hospital to heal, and Beautiful People seems to want to effect a similar cure on its audience.
The film is, however, ambivalent. On the one hand its conclusion offers hope and closure with the birth of baby Chaos and the marriage between a Bosnian who repents his past war crimes and the idealistically liberal offspring of a blinkered, old-school Tory. On the other, it signals instability and the continuation of nationalist conflict: as the Serb, Croat and Welsh zealots play a hand of cards with the Ward Sister, the previous tensions - represented by the recurrent fights between the Serb and the Croat that have punctured the film's superficial optimism throughout - are barely disguised. So Beautiful People is a film of unusual potency, a romantic comedy predicated upon coincidence which isn't undercut by the bleakness of its politics.
The problems with Beautiful People stem from Dizdar cramming in too many narrative ramifications in his eagerness to dramatise the issue of nationalism and to force a tenuous parallel between Bosnia and Britain. As a traditional morality tale, Beautiful People bears more than a passing resemblance to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with its opening Capulet-versus-Montague fight between two sworn enemies from the same Bosnian town. The peripatetic slugging match that ensues is just one of many such accidental encounters that drive the action, as they do in classic tragedy. But for contemporary cinema the film's use of implausible coincidences such as the Serb and the Croat adversaries finding themselves on the same ward, or Doctor Mouldy treating the pregnant Bosnian woman in the same hospital, falsifies the film's dominant realism.
Counteracting this formulaic structuring, however, is a pervasive playfulness, a tone that situates Beautiful People within a distinctly European tradition of surrealism, irreverence and anarchic political commentary. Particularly inspired is the sporadic sequence of scenes featuring actual or potential leg amputations. Like an absurd game of consequences (and indeed one of the surrealist automatic writing games was a version of this), a potentially arbitrary link is forged between Jerry's daughter watching the scene in The Railway Children (1970) in which the schoolboy almost gets his leg severed by an oncoming locomotive, the amputation in a Bosnian field hospital and Jerry's attempt to lose his injured leg via The Railway Children method. There is a liberation about this style, in contrast with some of the film's more leaden aspects, such as its clunky parallel editing and rather obvious flagging of Britain as multi-ethnic not unlike Yugoslavia. Dizdar is careful not to impose his politics, which means that the film could be accused of being uncommitted.
Within its plotting frenzy, Beautiful People leaves little time to explore the many issues it touches on, such as the diagnosis of Jerry's malaise as 'Bosnia syndrome' - a total identification with the victim - or Pero confessing to a violent past almost as the credits roll. In all the freneticism, there is no time to think, which makes its status as a political allegory a bit of a problem.
Credits
- Producer
- Ben Woolford
- Screenplay
- Jasmin Dizdar
- Director of Photography
- Barry Ackroyd
- Editor
- Justin Krish
- Production Designer
- Jon Henson
- Music
- Garry Bell
- ©Beautiful Stories Ltd.
- Production Companies
- The British Film Institute and Channel Four present a Tall Stories production
- In association with the Arts Council of England and the Merseyside Film Production Fund with the participation of BskyB and British Screen
- Screenplay developed by BFI Production and Channel Four
- Supported by the proceeds of the National Lottery through The Arts Council of England
- Executive Producer
- BFI Production:
- Roger Shannon
- Line Producer
- Christopher Collins
- Executive in Charge of Production
- BFI Production:
- Angela Topping
- Development Executives
- BFI Production:
- Petra Fried
- Eliza Mellor
- Production Co-ordinator
- Emma Fowler
- Unit Manager
- Tanya Harris
- Location Manager
- Helene Lenszner
- Assistant Directors
- Andrew Woodhead
- Diane Wood
- Liam O'Donnell
- Script Supervisor
- Rosamund Davies
- Casting Directors
- Suzanne Crowley
- Gilly Poole
- Story Consultant
- Howard Schuman
- 2nd Camera
- Paul Nash
- Special Effects
- Hart Special Effects
- Model Maker
- Chris Hoyland
- Computer Graphics
- Steve Williams
- Art Director
- Cristina Casali
- Costume Designer
- Louise Page
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Michael Mooney
- Make-up Designer
- Penny Smith
- Make-up Artists
- Felicity Wright
- Additional:
- Susanna Allaun
- Mary Hillman
- Juliette Jackson
- Anna Orr
- Linda Shaw
- Katia Sisto
- Titles Design/Opticals
- Cine Image
- Musicians
- Violin:
- Chris Garrick
- Acoustic Bass:
- Chris Laurence
- Mandolin:
- Stuart Hall
- Whistle:
- Dirk Campbell
- E Flat Horn:
- Django Bates
- Trumpets:
- Paul Jayasinha
- Chris Batchelor
- Clarinet:
- Dave Bitelli
- Cymbalom:
- Greg Knowles
- Tuba:
- Alice Kinloch
- Euphonium/Trombone:
- Steve Cooper
- Drums/Percussion:
- Paul Clarvis
- Accordion:
- Kim Burton
- Music Supervisor
- Robin Bell
- Engineer
- Mark Tucker
- Soundtrack
- "Pity the Sadness" by Nicholas Holmes, performed by Paradise Lost; "Sweet Mother" by Prince Niko M'Barga, performed by Elizabeth Isiorho; "Let's Talk about Life" by Garry Bell, Jasmin Dizdar, performed by Emma Jane Fox; "Gold, Silver or Love" (trad), arranged by Nikola Parov, Márta Sebestyén, performed by Márta Sebestyén; "Enemy Lullaby", "This Is War My Friend", "Ghostland", "She's Beautiful" by John Reynolds, Justin Adams, Caroline Dale, performed by Ghostland; "Sail Away" by Randy Newman, performed by Ghostland, Kirsty MacColl; "Tsiftetelli" (trad), performed by Nikos Theodoropoulos, Christos Theodoropoulos (karamousa), Dionysios Theodoropoulos, Mitsos Theodoropoulos (daouli); "Dance the Devil Away" by Martin Craddick, performed by Outback; "Bugeilo'r Gwenith Gwyn" (trad), performed by Nicholas McGaughey; "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4" by Edward Elgar, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted Yehudi Menuhin; "Souvenirs d'Andalousie" by L.M. Gottschalk, arranged/performed by Chris Barton; "Davni chasy" (trad), arranged by David Gedge, performed by The Wedding Present; "Blessing and Honour (Ancient of Days)" by Gary Sadler, Jamie Harvill, performed by the Watford and Ealim Church Choir
- Sound Recordist
- Simmy Claire
- Dubbing Mixer
- Dave Humphries
- Sound Editors
- Stephen Griffiths
- Phil Barnes
- Kallis Shamaris
- Kevin Brazier
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Alan Sallabank
- Foley
- Artists:
- John Fewell
- Julie Ankerson
- Mixer:
- Trevor Swanscott
- Editor:
- Rick Dunford
- Technical Manager
- BFI Production:
- Andy Powell
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Roderick P. Woodruff
- Film Extract
- The Railway Children
(1970)- Cast
- Rosalind Ayres
- Nora Thornton
- Linda Bassett
- sister
- Charlotte Coleman
- Portia Thornton
- Edin Dzandzanovic
- Pero Guzina
- Nicholas Farrell
- Doctor Mouldy
- Julian Firth
- Edward Thornton
- Walentine Giorgiewa
- Dzemila Hadzibegovic
- Dado Jehan
- Serb
- Edward Jewesbury
- Joseph Thornton
- Charles Kay
- George Thornton
- Gilbert Martin
- Jerry Higgins
- Nicholas McGaughey
- Welshman
- Danny Nussbaum
- Griffin Midge
- Faruk Pruti
- Croat
- Siobhan Redmond
- Kate Higgins
- Jay Simpson
- Bigsy
- Roger Sloman
- Roger Midge
- Steve Sweeney
- Jim
- Heather Tobias
- Felicity Midge
- Radoslav Youroukov
- Ismet Hadzibegovic
- Thomas Goodridge
- youth with mobile phone
- Tony Peters
- bus driver
- Bobby Williams
- Tim Mouldy
- Joseph Williams
- Tom Mouldy
- Elizabeth Isiorho
- African woman
- Dev Sagoo
- DSS clerk
- Vera Jakob
- waitress
- Melee Hutton
- Mrs Mouldy
- Louise Breckon-Richards
- policewoman
- Sharon D. Clarke
- Nurse Tina
- Jessica Brandon
- Chloe Higgins
- Martin Alderdice
- BBC camera man
- Niall Ivers
- Hashim
- Raules Davies
- UN soldier
- Alan Cowan
- immigration official
- Jonny Phillips
- Brian North
- Craig Stokes
- hospital security guard
- Kenan Hudaverdi
- railway worker
- Annette Badland
- psychologist
- Peter Harding
- detective
- Andrew Logan
- hypnotherapist
- Anthony Carrick
- retired Tory MP
- Certificate
- tbc
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- Dolby digital
- In Colour