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
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011