film review: Waltz with Bashir

[Xavier_Onassis]

Film Review: Waltz with Bashir


Directed by Israeli Ari Folman, this film deals with his attempts to remember events in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980's, 20 years ago.It is mostly all animated, but do not asume that it rsembles a cartoon in any real way. Folman's memories are jogged by a friend with a similar memory problem, then he visits others, a therapist, a comrade in arms who made a fortune selling falafel in Holland, and firends of friends until he comes to the final event, the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinian refugees in those two camps by the Lebanese Christian Phalangists, in revenge for the murder of their hero, Bashir  Gamayel at the moment of his triumph.The sound track is great, some of the scenes are poetic in the way that memories can be poetic. The film is spoken in Hebrew and English with subtitles and a commentary track in English subtitles.

It starts off setting the mood with a scene from the dream of Folman's friend of a pack of crazed dogs running through the streets of a city, I suppose Beirut. The Dogs of War. This is a very innovative film, probably more so than any you have seen. It deals with history and the atrocities of war, but it is also about the nature of dreams and memory. Four and a half of five stars, maybe five. Really grat and really different and innovative.

   

[Michael Tee]

This film's been around for two, maybe three years.  I remember it was at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival at least two or three years ago.  It's something I always wanted to see but just somehow never did.  So thanks for the reminder, XO, this time I am really going to make the effort, rent a copy and watch it.  It's something I've heard nothing but good about.

While I'm on the subject of catching up with the oldies but goodies, anyone know the name of the John Cusack flick where he's pursued by a paper-boy who pops up at odd points in the narrative to demand his $2.00?

[Amianthus]

This film's been around for two, maybe three years.  I remember it was at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival at least two or three years ago.  It's something I always wanted to see but just somehow never did.  So thanks for the reminder, XO, this time I am really going to make the effort, rent a copy and watch it.  It's something I've heard nothing but good about.

It's available on Netflix for rent, or if you want to watch instantly, you can purchase it from Amazon's Video On Demand service.

While I'm on the subject of catching up with the oldies but goodies, anyone know the name of the John Cusack flick where he's pursued by a paper-boy who pops up at odd points in the narrative to demand his $2.00?

Better Off Dead

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are a lot of extra stuff on the DvD, so I would recommend renting it. Folman says that he wanted to make an anti-war film which would not make the soldiers anyone worth emulating, and he seems to have accomplished this quite well. All wars are stupid, and are planned by stupid men, he says.

[Michael Tee]

Thanks, Ami. 

[Xavier_Onassis]

Israeli films are a true mixed bag. The Miami Library has lots of them. Some are great, some are amateurish, others, especially those claiming to be "uproarishly funny" are just confusing and occasionally unwatchable. I would expect humor to be a major asset, as there are so many funny Jewish comedians, but perhaps they deport the unfunny to Israel. More likely the translations are to blame. A good joke based on a Hebrew pun, it not going to be funny when translated to English 9 times out of ten.

[Michael Tee]

Thanks, XO.  I just finished watching Waltz With Bashir.

I don't know what to say.  That was one powerful film.  All I can think of is that if there's a God, those deaths will be avenged, and if there isn't, they won't be.  There's a sick feeling in my gut that there is no God and those deaths won't be avenged.  Ever.  This is the kind of sick fucking world we live in.  Obviously if the Holocaust was never avenged, how the hell can anyone expect that Sabra and Shatila will be? 

The standard existentialist reply is that if there's no God, then it's up to us to straighten out the world, but the existentialists had no idea of the entrenched power of evil.  It's an unwinnable struggle.  This is Satan's world, not mine.  In order to have even a hope of justice, there'd have to be massive regime changes in most of the world's countries starting with the USA and lotsa luck widdat.

I checked out the Wikipedia article to see if the characters in the film were real - - they were, including Ari's company commander and  the lady shrink.  I agreed with the criticism of the film outlined in the Wikipedia article on it, that the film hinted at but ultimately obscured Israeli complicity in the massacre and tried to load most of the responsibility onto the Phalange.  This was a situation almost identical to the Jassy (Romania) pogrom, when the Nazi troops encircled the Jewish quarter and blocked all exits, then allowed fanatical Romanian anti-Semites to enter and conduct the actual massacre.  As one Israeli journalist of the time paraphrased Sharon's lame excuses, "Yes, I let the snake into the cage, but how could I possibly have known it would eat the canary?"

[Plane]

What if God reserves the right of revenge for himself?


The later you caught it , the worse he could make it.

[Michael Tee]

<<What if God reserves the right of revenge for himself?


<<The later you caught it , the worse he could make it.>>

It would be pointless.  The witnesses to the original atrocity would be long gone.  The revenge would teach nothing to nobody.  People, especially the victims and their survivors, want to see the revenge, otherwise it's worthless.  They go to their graves thinking that nobody avenged their dead.  You can't imagine how bitter a  pill that is to swallow.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Revenge against atrocities seems to me to be ultimately as pointless as a doctor seeking to avenge a microbe. The best we can hope for is to prevent future occurrences. As for God reserving revenge for himself, I see that as absurd, being as we have no clear examples where this has happened. The universe is only as orderly as it has to be to not fall apart. Or as absurd as the soldier with the machine gun doing his "waltz with Bashir".

In addition to the message of this film, it was often poetic, especially when it touched upon the matter of the fluid and changing nature of memory. An old commando boat becomes a "love boat", swimming away from danger at night seems pleasant. Crushing cars with tanks becomes an adolescent prank.

There are few films that have ever presented war as realistically as this one. Using drawings rather than actors was inspired. Cartoons have a number of qualities that human actors cannot have.

[Michael Tee]

<<Revenge against atrocities seems to me to be ultimately as pointless as a doctor seeking to avenge a microbe.>>

Flawed analogy.  The doctor is a witness to the atrocity, not a victim or survivor crying out for vengeance.  Furthermore the atrocity is committed by a thinking human being with choices before him, to do good or evil - - not by a microbe.

<< The best we can hope for is to prevent future occurrences.>>

When Fidel took power in Havana, Batista's torturers and executioners were tried in the baseball stadium under the floodlights before the people of the city, and executed minutes later against the stadium wall.  THAT is "the best we can hope for."  And once in a great while, it actually  happens.   Because once in a hundred years, a man like Fidel comes along to make it happen.

<<As for God reserving revenge for himself, I see that as absurd, being as we have no clear examples where this has happened.>>

It's absurd because there is no God.  It would be beautiful if there were.

<< The universe is only as orderly as it has to be to not fall apart. >>

How do you know it's NOT falling apart?

<<In addition to the message of this film, it was often poetic, especially when it touched upon the matter of the fluid and changing nature of memory. An old commando boat becomes a "love boat", swimming away from danger at night seems pleasant. Crushing cars with tanks becomes an adolescent prank.

<<There are few films that have ever presented war as realistically as this one. Using drawings rather than actors was inspired. Cartoons have a number of qualities that human actors cannot have.>>

You need to see "Grave of the Fireflies," a classic Japanese animated film showing the horrors of the air war in Japan, as seen through the eyes of two Japanese children. Older animation techniques, but the anti-war film to end all anti-war films.  Curtis LeMay would have wept.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Actually, the universe IS falling apart. That is one of the Laws of Thermodynamics. What I meant is that the universe is just coherent enough to not simply collapse in a huge boom, all at once.

Revenge might be desirable, but lots of atrocities cannot be avenged. All those directly responsible for 9-11 died in the event. If you want revenge on a kamikaze attack, you are just sh!t outta luck. Who would you propose be avenged for Sabra and Shatila? Sharon, maybe, the Phalangists, certainly, but I would not hold the guys shooting off flares responsible. The revenge is that they will have to live with this, maybe make a film, and give the Israelis a sense of guilt. Guilt is a Jewish specialty, certainly more than a Turkish specialty or a German specialty.

What I meant is that the microbe is evil to the person it infects, by its very nature. Could it be that the desire for revenge can also be evil by nature? Some group, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, who knows, killed Bashir and martyred him, so the Phalangists wiped out Sabra and Shatila, that was their revenge. Was it merited to do this? Only if someone from the camps was responsible, and then only if they killed those responsible. Murdering innocent women and children is not justified.

The Cuban Revolution was an anomaly, from the very start. Castro giving a speech with a dove on his shoulder, the trials of Batista's goons, the while bit up to maybe  the clampdown on gays around 1967. At the present moment, as I have often said, the current Cuban government is incapable of running the country. The farmers have died off and their children hate dirt, so there are no crops. The is a salt shortage on a tropical island surrounded by saltwater. Most of their foo is bought from the US, because Cubans cannot grow enough rice and beans. They have even imported sugar from Brazil.

If there is a God, it could be as absurd to expect revenge from Him as it  would be if there were none, as there is little evidence that God has ever actually been into revenge if you look at each allegation that he is clearly.  I am thinking that the universe is too big for any number of dieties to hndle, even if they exist.

Cuba may not need a capitalist government, and surely does not need one of "exiles", but it surely needs a fresh government. Thanks for the recommendation of the Fireflies film. I may have heard of it long ago.

[Plane]

God has a perspective that need not consider a grave to be a permanent ending.

Indeed what revenge is there in death when we must all have one?

A Jain might try to avoid walking on the grass so that he won't crush any bugs , is this sort of effort necessacery twards rightiousness?

A microbe that understood revenge would want some for all of its sister cells that were cruelly attacked by antibiotics, but is there a revenge on an unthinking thing?

In a movie a villain might give a long soliloquy to his victims in which he explains to his victim his justifacation , does this happen in real life?

All we have access to is human intelligence , unevenly spread and randomly directed , it is often found that all sides in a conflict feel justified in takeing violence .

Only Gods perspective makes evening the scales a real potential, nothing less has any possibility of reaching even placement of deserved reprisal.

[Michael Tee]

First of all, the persons responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres are the Christian Phalangists who did the actual killing and the Jewish soldiers who surrounded the camps, sealed off the approaches and exits and then permitted the Phalange to enter them fully armed, less than 24 hours after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, their leader.  The Israeli commander, Gen. Sharon, had the dumbest and most lame-assed excuse ever for this atrocity, which was that "never in our wildest dreams" did we think there would be a massacre, we just wanted them to arrest terrorists."  What a bunch of fucking bullshit.  It was EXACTLY the same excuse the Nazis used when they sealed off ghettoes and allowed local armed anti-Semites to enter and do whatever they wanted to do to the Jews within a specified period of so many hours.  Jews of all the people on this planet ought to know better and to punish that kind of shit severely.

Secondly, Bashir Gemayel was a fascist and deserved to die.  The Phalange is a bunch of deranged scumbags not unlike the Italian fascist party on which it is modeled, and membership in the organization ought to be punishable by death.  So any idea that the Phalangists were just avenging the murder of Bashir Gemayel is totally absurd - - nobody has a right to avenge the death of somebody who deserved to die.

<< . . . but I would not hold the guys shooting off flares responsible.>>

Of course they were guilty.  They knew why they were shooting off flares.  In any event, as members of an army that stood by and watched it happen when they had the power to stop it, they are as guilty as the actual murderers.