Robin Wood's favorable reading of Jasmin Dizdar's award winning Beautiful People (CineAction #54) inspired me to re-view a film I had originally dismissed as an inconsequential if heartwarming exercise in humanism. (The jacket of the DVD release contains additional plaudits from Amy Taubin and A.O.

Scott). Subsequent viewings, however, have only confirmed my initial suspicions of its liberal politics. More is at issue here than challenging a fellow critic's reading of Dizdar's rather cunning film (and as a consequence my argument will not take the form of a point-by-point challenge to Wood's reading). Dizdar's 1999 film (set in 1993) about Bosnian refugees in London must be viewed in the context of current global conditions. One consequence of the current U.S. military action in the Middle East subsequent to the attack on the World Trade Center has been the increase of already critical numbers of political refugees throughout the world. If we add to these numbers the movement of peoples as Labor resulting fro m the shiftings of the global economy as well as the post-colonial movement of peoples from former European colonies into First World countries (and the resistance to these movements by communities within the host countries) then this political context can certainly be described as an international crisis of migrating and uprooted people. The importance of Dizdar's little feel-good film is elevated by this context and as it is set in the host country of Great Britain essential issues are raised regarding both the interaction of host communities with immigrant population as well as state immigration policies. As the opening credits list a variety of British facilitating organizations (among them the BFI and the Arts Council of England) the reader might give these two points considerable attention.

Britain

The film opens on a London city bus, travel abruptly disrupted by a fight between two Bosnian immigrants who (rediscovering each other apparently for the first time in London) have immediately renewed old inter-ethnic antagonisms. Robin Wood has described (correctly I think) the bus as "a microcosm of an embryonic multi-racial community" its passengers of various races and ages "sitting together peaceably". He is, however, silent about the conditions that make possible this peaceful co existence. Certainly the state's public service sector is much in evidence in this part of the film. The bus driver, for example, immediately takes charge of the situation, separates the two combatants and (finding them unwilling to desist) ejects them from the bus and resumes travel. Later a policewoman is found almost immediately to assist a woman in apparent distress and even a traffic cop's stop sign seems to encourage the two Bosnians to desist. Related to this are the representatives of the state's social welfare aspect, primarily the nurses and doctors in the hospital in which much of the film takes place but also a benign case worker who patiently explains (to an uncomprehending Bosnian immigrant) his state benefits.

We are very far here from those depictions of state bureaucracies (or our own experiences of them) as both inefficient and indifferent to human suffering, officialdom here depicted as both efficient (the bus driver, the policewoman) and benign (the hospital staff, the caseworker). This is why the film's references to traditional patriotic feeling (the statue of Churchill which hovers stolidly and with apparent displeasure over the combatants, the sample of one of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches heard during a drive through the London streets) can only be taken as partly ironic, if ironic at all: The stable nation of myth, of common racial identity and common purpose has been replaced by the multi-racial and culturally diverse yet still stable Britain of today, stability now deriving from the state's efficient public service bureaucracies.

The impression of state beneficence remains despite the evidence of a contradictory government agenda regarding immigration (immigration agents who police the immigrant population, the reactionary pronouncements of a Tory statesman). We might compare Dizdar's division between good and bad policy with a similar division in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Whatever Capra's original intent in representing American capitalism through 'good' and 'bad' capitalists (respectively George Bailey and Mr. Potter) the film's greatness derives from his inability to maintain an absolute division, the narrative moving toward that climactic moment when bad capitalist designates good capitalist his twin (" ...a warped, frustrated young man"). Operating as mutually exclusive tendencies of Britain's immigration policy, bad policy in Beautiful People is easily subsumed within the overwhelming evidence of state beneficence. Bad policy registers in Beautiful People as an aberration rather than as a reflection of any ambivalent feeli ngs held by the British voters regarding immigration.

The British People

Ultimately the impression of state beneficence is dependent upon the British people themselves, both as employees within the public sector and (at least in theory) as those who give consensus collectively to public policy. In relation to the immigrant population, British altruism is much in evidence: By the conclusion several Londoners have not only taken a personal interest in an individual Bosnian or Bosnian family but have allowed an immigrant into his/her private life. British sensitivity to Bosnian suffering is so acute that it can even overwhelm the Personal: Scottish BBC journalist Jerry Higgins actually develops 'Bosnia syndrome', described in the film as "an obsession with helping people", a pathology that almost destroys his family life. As with the film's portrait of state beneficence, the impression of the people's kindliness and sensitivity overwhelms the film's few representations of British intolerance. For instance the violent actions of three nationalist youths (both racist and anti-immigrant ), presented in isolation within a general social atmosphere of civility, comes to appear (like bad state policy) an aberration. As for the Tory statesman (Thornton), his reactionary politics (he warns of the infusion into Britain of "foreign layabouts") are partly ameliorated by another authorial strategy: the suggestion that he is a political opportunist and merely mimicking the current prime minister. (The discussion at the breakfast table when the Thorntons are introduced concerns whether the father is a "brown nose"). In fact if there is one unregenerate villain in the film it is Thornton's rabidly conservative son whose narrative function appears to be twofold. On the one hand, he functions as a demonstration of the inhumanity of an ultra-conservative political position. (The son likens his father's 'foreign layabouts' speech to "bleeding heart platitudes"). On the other hand, as the film's sole representative of political intransigence, his presence automatically modifies our impression of his father's expressed politics, which by contrast come to seem more acceptable.

At no point in the film does Dizdar (who was born in Bosnia and immigrated to Great Britain in 1989) align himself explicitly on either side of the ethnic conflict central to the Bosnian civil war, his discretion (registering as political neutrality) appropriate to the film's anti-war stance. In a letter written in response to Wood's article ("Nationalism and the Zizek Syndrome", CineAction #55) Vladslav Mijic challenges Dizdar's apparent neutrality. He argues, for example, that those characters least subjected to the film's generally satiric tone (that is, those presented singularly as tragic victims of the war) are from the director's own ethnic background. My own limited knowledge of Dizdar's biography (all biographical data is taken from the Toronto Film Festival catalogue for the year 2000) as well as the finer points of ethnicity in the region (Mijic's argument is based partly on making distinctions between Muslim names and Croat) disallows my weighing in on the letter's content, although it seems clea r that he raises vital points. I refer to the letter primarily for two reasons. First, it provides an opening for me to question both the film's apparent neutrality and (related to this) the generosity for which the film has been explicitly praised. Political neutrality is a difficult proposition at any time and a particularly difficult (and dubious) achievement for an artist, particularly one personally implicated in the politics of a given work. Thus, I raise the issue of possible bias less as a criticism of Dizdar than to remind the reader to be ever vigilant for the signs and symptoms of partiality and political allegiance, particularly in seemingly 'neutral' works. Secondly, I wish to qualify Mijic's reading. If the film betrays signs of surreptitious ethnic bias, the opposition of ethnicities within the narrative is second to the opposition of (in Mijic's useful description) "two hybrid nations", Bosnia and Britain: It is the dialectical relationship between the two countries that drives the narrative a nd evidences a bias against Bosnia that is more pervasive that its ethnic bias.

The dichotomy of national characteristics (British kindliness, altruism and social stability in opposition to Bosnian violence, brutality and social disintegration) pervades the entire film. In the case of the Bosnians, national characteristics transcend ethnicity, uniting all Bosnians ultimately in terms of violence and savagery. It is, in fact, the film's abrupt entry into a Bosnian war zone that confirms, by contrast, Britain's civilized values. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss the dichotomy of 'Bosnia' and 'Britain' as merely that of a nation at war and one at peace. For the film has already suggested (in ways both obvious and subtle) that its perspective on national differences will be essentially racial (if you will) rather than situational. The opening scene on the bus has already set up an opposition between Bosnian violence and obstinacy and British civility, a contrast that develops as the fight spills out onto the street and becomes spectacle for various bemused and bewildered London ped estrians. The use of lively 'ethnic' music as background suggests the filmmaker's attitude is equally bemused as well as condescending: The contrast in tone between the music and the extremely violent occurrence suggests the violence is not to be taken too seriously and that it is in stark contrast to (and easily contained by) the norms of a clearly civilized society. That the film's take on this occurrence is essentially racial is further suggested in a subsequent diner scene where the very same music issues from the walkman of another Bosnian, the apparently gentle and compliant Pero, linking him to his countrymen's violence. That he should eventually not only admit to his participation in wartime atrocities but explicitly equate his reform to becoming an English citizen ("I'm you now" he declares to an English audience at the conclusion) makes explicit the filmmaker's racial essentialism.

Thus the terms of the dichotomy of nations have already been established by the time the narrative shifts to Bosnia. The pivotal event of the Bosnia scenes is the amputation of a leg by medics (non-English and presumably Bosnian) without benefit of anesthesia. It is once again the opportune presence of gentle British citizens, Jerry Higgins (the BBC reporter who will develop Bosnia syndrome) and Griffin Midge (the gentlest of three violently nationalist youths who, in a telling Christian metaphor, is airlifted accidently into Bosnia and descends like an angel), that shows up Bosnian brutality. Shocked by the proceedings ("You can't cut off his leg like that!") Griffin, a drug user, offers his last hit of heroin as anesthetic, its numbing effects accompanied by 'ironic' heavenly music. These scenes are disturbing enough although I would argue that Dizdar's meandering camera disallows too close emotional involvement: They suffer in comparison with (for example) Hitchcock's inescapably agonizing buildup to the amputation in Lifeboat. Unfortunately, what begins as a (at least) potentially devastating account of a necessary consequence of war becomes instead an opportunity to again showcase British sensitivity: Not only is this the pivotal event in triggering Jerry's illness (identifying with the amputee, he becomes obsessed with having his own leg amputated after a comparatively minor leg wound) but Griffin is cured of his nascent racism, shortly thereafter returning to England with a wounded Bosnian boy. (It is worth noting that the hegemony of British sensitivity is not restricted to the Britain/Bosnia dialectic: At one point Jerry Higgins rescues Griffin from a particularly rough-and-ready American with the U.N. forces).

In the presence of hegemonic British sensitivity, the amputation comes to appear almost a savage rite rather than a consequence of war (which itself appears the apotheosis of Bosnia's 'inherent' brutality). Anti-Bosnian feeling even effects the film's seemingly progressive critique of masculinity, specifically as an aspect of national identity. The first clear lines of dialogue heard in the film are a radio announcer's reference to an historic 1993 soccer match between England and Holland, specifically referring to Rotterdam's plans to deal with the anticipated influx of rabble rousing soccer fans. (Shortly thereafter we learn the three rabble rousing nationalist youths, obsessive soccer fans, are planning a trip to Holland in support of the English team). Immediately afterwards, the bus melee begins, the bus driver dividing the combatants with the line "This is London Transport: We don't behave like that in this country" (thus defining British civility as both a matter of cultural norms and the policies of a state institution). The apparently developing critique of nationalist masculinity continues with the storyline of a Bosnian man who wants to kill his wife's soon-to-be-born baby, her pregnancy the result of a gang rape by opposing Bosnian soldiers. ("Baby my enemy" he declares). The parallels between violent Bosnian men infected by ethnic hatred and violent Britains infected by competitive sport is eventually abandoned. By the conclusion the three nationalist youths have been reformed of their racism and are last seen protectively hovering about the Bosnian child brought back by Griffin. As for the critique of competitive sports, amazingly Griffin is seen late in the film taking the still recuperating child to a sports bar to witness a sporting event. Which leaves at the conclusion only Bosnian men as the perpetrators of nationalist violence. It is true that the original two Bosnian combatants have modified their behavior by the conclusion. (Amazingly they are last seen channeling their aggressions through competitive play, in this case a card game). How successful their acculturation to British norms has been, however, is left open: The film's final image (before the credits) is of a Bosnian's raised, clenched fist.

The Family

The film's conservatism extends beyond race. Robin Wood has commended the film for its revolutionary take on the family particularly that of Dr. Mouldy who, abandoned by wife and children, adopts the Bosnian couple and its newborn baby. I will return to the Mouldy instance but for now, while granting that the film is rich in images of nuclear family disintegration and stagnation, it nonetheless reinforces the traditional functions of parents. The film is particularly rich in mothers, traditionally the 'heart' of the family, bridge and bulwark between belligerent patriarchs and recalcitrant kids. Two mothers are rewarded for their forbearance: Mrs. Midge when her son is rehabilitated socially and morally and Mrs. Thornton when her rebellious daughter Portia marries (an event which, while undertaken ostensibly to prevent the deportation of her Bosnian lover, is nonetheless a step along the conventional female path). The film's dedication to motherhood is such that it is also littered with symbolic mothers, wome n who extend motherhood's primary functions, nurturing and socialization, beyond the home. Most obviously there is the head nurse in the ward where the two immigrant combatants from the opening (now injured) end up, who subjects her two charges to a regimen of tough love and a common sense program of behavior modification. There is also the matronly waitress in a cafe who actually chases after Pero several blocks to return his welfare certificate. (Fittingly the only patient care we see Dr. Portia Thornton perform is feeding soup to Pero).

But this dedication to motherhood creates unforeseen problems. The depiction of Mrs. Mouldy is contradictory at best. Belligerent, fretful and above all suspicious (her suspiciousness is indirectly responsible for the accident that lands Pero in the hospital) the film nonetheless implies that this clearly neurotic woman has a positive influence upon her two unruly and rebellious boys, whose behavior is considerably modified after she takes custody of them. (Technically her mother takes custody but she is presented as equally belligerent). It seems clear we are meant to infer that a mother (no matter who the mother) exerts a civilizing influence upon a child and, further, that Mrs. Mouldy's neurotic behavior derived from the unnatural separation of mother and children.

If the film affirms traditional motherhood, it seemingly attempts to modify traditional fatherhood. Thus we are meant to prefer Griffin's nurturing of the Bosnian child ("pushing the pram" as his nationalist friend puts it) to his father's uncompromising and rigid demands. Similarly, Jerry Higgins is 'reformed' of his neglectful ways and redirects his emotional commitment from Bosnian victims to his own daughter. I would argue that the film's commitment to a modified fatherhood is just as suspect in its ambiguities as its commitment to a modified masculinity (of which it is an obvious aspect): Griffin's tough disciplinarian father, for instance, is also a beloved teacher in an inner-city school (where, in one of recent cinema's most reactionary images, we see him surrounded by dozens of black and brown kids singing him birthday greetings). The 'modification' of fatherhood in Hollywood narratives of some twenty years ago is relevant here. Reacting to the gains of the modern feminist movement, specifically the reorganization of family life resulting from women's greater social mobility (and the threat to familiar Oedipal social relations perpetuated within the home), Hollywood began producing narratives (e.g. Mr. Mom) featuring caretaker dads and absentee mothers. As in Dizdar's film, the modification of the traditional masculine social role in films of the early eighties actually provided a golden opportunity to demonstrate the extraneousness of Woman within the bourgeois home, that the father was quite capable of handling the job of socializing the young. (The regurgitation of patriarchal social and sexual norms directly from father to child within Hollywood narratives is still with us and transcends genre: witness The Sixth Sense, where Bruce Willis' father figure nurtures the screen's most besieged latchkey child).

But as Robin Wood brilliantly notes (in his Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan) the extraneousness of mothers in such films as Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People also reflects that Oedipal moment when the child comes to identify with the social and sexual demands of patriarchy through identification with the father, a moment when both the mother's Oedipal role and her function as buffer between father and child become superfluous. Thus, as caretaker to the Bosnian child, Griffin establishes his identification with the father (he is himself now a de facto dad) and completes his Oedipal journey. To signal this fact (as well as the bypassing of the mother in the socialization of the Bosnian child) Dizdar concludes with a seemingly extraneous 'comic' interlude in which Griffin's mom accidentally ingests some drugs, gets high and wakes to find that 1) her Oedipal necessity is at an end and 2) the mother's traditional domestic functions have been usurped by men. In perhaps the film's most telling image, our conclu ding view of Griffin's 'utopian' family has Griffin, his father and his reformed friends arranged in a final tableau about the Bosnian child, with Woman decidedly excluded from the circle. How To Look After An Immigrant

One effect of the film's stylization, with characters from the various storylines interrelating and crossing paths (sometimes in extremely minor ways), giving an overall impression of cohesion, is to obscure the film's several narrative contradictions (see also Mijic's letter). One of the film's most glaring contradictions is that between the Jerry Higgins storyline and that of Dr. Mouldy, the former ending with Higgins redirecting his commitments from Bosnian suffering to his own family while the latter is resolved in exactly the opposite way, each resolution presented as mutually exclusive and thematically self-contained. Wood is comparatively dismissive of the Higgins narrative but in a peculiar way its resolution lays bare the sterility of the film's family politics: The Higgins family (husband, wife, child) simply packs up and goes on a Hawaiian vacation. Despite more complex resolutions the political content of the film's other family storylines is hardly more progressive than the restoration of the tra ditional nuclear family presented here.

If its political content is equally reactionary, the symbolic material of the Mouldy storyline is more complex. The film's racial and family politics are united here within one of the hoariest of cultural metaphors: the doctor as adjudicator of social ills. The doctor's symbolic function in fictional texts derives from his professional intervention in matters of life and death. Here is Andrew Britton on the subject: "The power of life and death is the power of reward and punishment...and accordingly 'the hospital' is that lofty seat of social judgement...to which metaphysical emergencies are admitted for remedial surgery and intercession, and for the tallying of the pros and cons of their reinstatement in the culture. Those of the good doctor's patients whose relationship to patriarchy is terminally contradictory expire under a cloud of pathos, but those who show promising signs of becoming normal at some future date are literally recuperated." ("A New Servitude", CineAction #26/27, p.49) The doctor's usurpat ion of the Creator's powers, however, is also a source of disquiet. It must be felt that his use of healing technique be in no way biased. His impartiality in life and death matters must be absolute. If it is not, he (for 'the doctor' is almost always a man) immediately becomes the bad doctor. The two bad doctors of King's Row (one murderous and one castrating), both respected family men, exemplify the extreme abuse of technique perpetrated by the physician personally invested in the maintenance of bourgeois private life. Thus the recurring celibacy (or at least singleness) of the good doctor in fiction: From Dr. Kildare to Marcus Welby M.D. to Dr. Larch in Hallstrom's The Cider House Rules the good doctor is almost always unmarried. (The symbolic social arbiter in fiction is hardly restricted to the medical profession and the stricture of celibacy placed on his/her judicial powers remains a common feature: note the bachelorhood of the investigators in detective fiction, from Sherlock Holmes to Jessica Fletch er).

The solution to the ambivalence the doctor arouses is not to reinforce his status as "secular deity" (Britton) but to recognize his fallibility, at which point his symbolic value as social arbiter in fiction immediately disappears. (The current challenge to bourgeois medicine's authority initiated by patient's rights advocates is encouraging. But the recent news of a British physician responsible for the murders of dozens of elderly women yet protected from investigation by local privacy laws tells us we have much farther to go). Dizdar takes the former path. There can be no doubt of Dr. Mouldy's devotion to both his children and his patients: He is simply making a botched job of his relationship to both. He must divest himself of one or the other and with the abdication of first his wife and then his children, he can finally fulfill his role as social arbiter. Mouldy himself seems well aware of this fact: Although clearly distressed when his wife finally gains custody of the children, he simply shuts the doo r and turns his complete attention to his adopted Bosnian family. The social problem in Beautiful People in need of the doctor's remedial attention is immigration. The metaphorical function of the medical profession becomes obvious if it is noted that every one of the film's Bosnian immigrants is essentially under a doctor's care at the conclusion. Recalling Britton's description, those immigrants with the greatest chance of successful integration into British society (Pero, the Bosnian family, Griffin's adopted child) are given provisional bills of health and released under the care of a personal physician (respectively Portia Thornton, Mouldy and Griffin Midge, who by way of his medical ministerings in Bosnia becomes an honorary doctor). On the other hand, those terminally opposed to British social norms become permanent residents of 'the hospital' (an anti-English Welsh terrorist who, with the declaration "It's my ward!", explicitly lays claim to a portion of the hospital). As for those showing promising s igns of future recovery yet also some signs of resistance to treatment (the two Bosnian combatants), they are left in a state of medical limbo.

Conclusion

"The biggest thing going on in the world now is the movement of peoples. Not necessarily war refugees, but just people are moving. And all of the legislation is to keep them from moving or to deal with them once they have moved, or to educate them or to not educate them, or to throw them Out or bum them, or, you know, whatever. That's what global policy is now about: What are we going to do with the people outside who are now inside?" (Toni Morrison, Vibe Magazine, May 1998, p.98)

Immigration is the disease that threatens in Beautiful People, the most extreme form of the disease being the violence and savagery the film applies almost exclusively to Bosnians. British civilization is both the cure and the organism threatened. And it is to protect the British body politic from infection that the Bosnian immigrants are committed to observation by 'the doctor'. Early in the film a caller to a radio program is heard commenting (in reference to immigration policy) "I think any measures you take should be targeted solely against troublemakers". And yet, as most of the Bosnians are under 'house arrest' at the conclusion (to apply another apposite metaphor to Dizdar's treatment of immigration) and two are 'in custody' it seems all the Bosnians are considered potential threats. The film's "generosity" is provisional at best.

In fact the metaphorical agenda to which the Bosnians are subjected is aligned very closely with Thornton's call for unspecified "curbs" on immigration. I have already discussed the film's turning toward the father in terms of the family but it seems to me turning toward 'the father' has broader implications in terms of the film's domestic politics. Is the middle-aged man (a guest a Portia's wedding) who assigns blame to both sides of the Bosnian conflict a parody of British upper-class complacency or a political savant? Just whose position does the film ultimately support, the unconventional screwball comedy heiress who (working in an inner-city public hospital!) is apparently ignorant of the state's policing of the immigrant community or her equally generic Tory dad? As with so many neo-liberal works the plethora of political positions given voice in the name of 'fairness' helps to disguise the text's more reactionary aspects. (Just what does it mean in terms of immigrants organizing to protect themselves from state harassment that all the film's major Bosnian characters are eventually dispersed into the white suburbs of London?). From my position, to answer these questions it is absolutely necessary to resist the film's provisional generosity as well as its liberal sheen.