Friday, October 30, 2009
DAZED AND REPRESSED
Today's film was the Israeli animated memoir of Ari Folman
Vals Im Bashir / Waltz With Bashir (2008)
The subject is the collective and individual Israeli detachment from the Christian Philangist massacre of thousands of Palestinians in 1982. Israel had invaded Lebanon and were occupying Bairut. Bashir, the charismatic leader of the philangists had been assassinated and this was a revenge massacre. The Israeli's stood by and let it happen. When there was "enough" they stopped it.
The parallels with Warsaw and the Nazi's "just following orders" thing touches this horrendous chapter in a horrendous series of Middle East war.
For Folman, who cannot remember where he was or what he was doing at the time, it is necessary to go and find out, if he can, what his part in it actually was. He is having nightmares. The same one. Twenty years later. No relief.
He goes and talks to as many people as he can find who would know about those times. The interviews are real but because many of the people did not want to be photographed, he uses animation and, in some cases, actors to voice the parts of the people he talks to.
Some are friends who were there with him. Others are public figures who were involved. Still others are professionals, psychologists and others, who can explain for us the mental gymnastics of repressed memory and detachment in the face of an atrocity.
The film is very engaging. The animation is unusual. Not humanly "perfect" as far as movement is concerned but, in fact, perfect in capturing the telling gestures of the people involved.
Finally, Folman remembers. He was in the direct periphery of the massacre itself and witnessed the aftermath of the mass of the dead. He was with the early detachment that entered the camp where the massacre occurred.
At the end, as he regains his memory, we switch to actual color photography. The distance afforded by the cartoons is broken and we are in the heart of the proceedings with Folman.
I will give this a 4 out of Netflix5. I would not mind seeing this again particularly to get the connections, laterally, between the people who are interviewed. They were all there together.
