Milosevic on Trial

The Slobodan Milosevic trial was a sorry chapter in the history of international law. Slobo refused to recognize the authority of the tribunal, insisted on representing himself, and dragged out the procedings for four years. In the course of this, the trial judge died and had to be replaced, and finally, Milosevic himself died, rendering the whole thing moot and making the whole process seem like a colossal waste of time.

This is the material that Danish director Michael Christoffersen had to work with for his documentary Milosevic on Trial. Two thousand hours of material, four years of proceedings, a central character who's dead, and no climax.

Christoffersen does what he can. He focuses on the lead prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, a Brit with a penchant for horrendously clashing shirts and ties, and Milosevic's legal adviser, a Serbian lawyer who worships the ground the disgusting creep walks on. But try as he might, he can't make the story compelling. For courtroom footage he has to rely on the official pool video, which is dull as dirt, shot, apparently, by a Dutch producer and six students. He is not allowed to talk to Milosevic on camera. We don't meet any of the witnesses outside the courtroom... and there aren't enough twists and turns in the trial to make a compelling story.

This is obviously a historically significant event that needed to be documented, and I applaud Christoffersen for sticking with it. I imagine there were times when he thought Milosevic and the judge had taken the smartest way out. But this is not a film that will stand the test of time.