When it comes to women achievers, none can compete with the solid curriculum vitae that Angelina Jolie has run up. An award-winning actress, a mother of six, a humanitarian and UNHRC Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie’s directorial debut only seals her position as Hollywood’s most inspiring performer. S. Dawdry / Celebritext speaks to her about the demands of love, conflict and motherhood.
Born Angelina Jolie Voight to acclaimed actor Jon Voight and Iroquois-French actress Marcheline Bertrand, who died five years ago, there is little that Jolie has done in her life that is not part of recorded history. Having acted, directed or given her voice to 36 films in almost as many years of her life, Jolie’s personal life and humanitarian globe-trotting have been as much part of mainstream journalism as her films. Her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, is insightful of the workings of her mind. A war film based on her own screenplay and shot on location in Sarajevo and Budapest, it tells the complicated love story of Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim female prisoner of a ‘rape camp’, and Danijel, a Serbian army officer, set against the backdrop of the cruel Bosnian War of the early nineties. Interestingly, the cast is all Bosnian, many of whom have been directly affected by the war.The very first film you directed is about war. Did it come out of the UN work that you do?
Yes, I’m sure that it was, even though I wasn’t quite conscious of it. Part of this film was never expected to be a movie. I thought, “I’ve written journals and op-eds and I’m just going to sit with this format of film since it’s what I’ve done in my life and quietly see if I can write a project where I can meditate and study what happens to human beings through war, so that I can better understand people in post-conflict situations and how to help.” This was my private homework and it gave me a kind of purpose to watch documentaries, do my own research, watch the footage, visit the region and spend time with people. Then somehow it ended up evolving into a film.
Was there a moment that you can remember where you realised that this was the way to live your life?
The life-changing moment for me was the first time that I went to a war zone. That was Sierra Leone. I wasn’t a goodwill ambassador; I just asked to go and I was allowed. That was a brutal conflict where they cut arms. And seeing little kids that had both their arms and legs cut off with a hatchet stuck to a tree, I could not for the life of me understand how this was happening. It was like someone smacked me in the face. Across the world there are these places where people literally cut hands off their brother or sister to try to then force them to beg in front of trucks and throw them in front of them. People are forced to watch… men are forced to rape their mothers in front of people. It’s beyond understanding. Then I went to Tanzania and saw the first mass refugee camp – it was about 500,000 people and you see that sea of humanity displaced and the lack of human rights. I just was in complete shock for a while. Then I broke down. I decided I would never ever forget what I had learned.
How much did you follow your creative instincts as a director and how much did you turn to others to figure out how to do something of this scale?
The script was very much in these rooms, and then of course as you have to start to accurately depict war, things start to get bigger and bigger. First we sent the script without my name on it to people from different sides of the conflict. We decided that if people from all different sides of the conflict would agree on the same story and participate – including Bosnian Serbs, Croatians, Bosnian Muslims, anyone from Serbia – then we had something. And if they could not agree, we wouldburn it. So then they came together and taught me a lot. They’ve all lost someone. I met a woman who told me about being held captive and used as a human shield, watching older women being forced to dance naked in front of soldiers. So, all these things changed as we went along. I never anticipated the scale of it, but I was very lucky to have Dean Semler working with us. He took a pay cut. Everybody did. The same with Jon Hutman. We worked together on The Tourist, which was all about elegance and wealth, and then suddenly there we were with no budget, working on a war movie. So, I asked everybody’s advice, anybody who was willing to talk to me.
Did you face any challenges in shaping the voices of characters because it’s developed in a different language?
I tried to keep the first draft quite clean where the only thing that’s said is just what needs to be said, and there’s a lot of silence and tension. Then we adjusted it into its authentic language. We had to not only get it translated, but we had to get it translated more than once. A translator couldn’t be just Bosnian Muslim or Bosnian Serb because then the translation would be slightly slanted one way or the other. And often, if I had wanted to check on performances I’d ask each of the actors, because it is their native tongue.
Are you hooked on this directing thing now or will it take a really special project to get you back to it?
It would take a really special project. I love this not because I wanted to be a director, but because I’m so happy to get this story out into the world. It wasn’t just a film. I don’t know if I could put that much energy into it again. It’s much easier to be an actor.
How do you juggle your schedule, your time and energy? Did you need to sacrifice things to make this film?
I would never sacrifice any time with my family. Between Brad [Pitt] and I, if we couldn’t manage our schedules, we’d always sacrifice work. I stayed with him with the kids while he was doing Moneyball in LA. Then, through this film, my family was there. He took the kids to school; and after school they came to the set and would stay outside, of course, and play with the fake snow. It was an inappropriate film for them to be near.
