Waltzing with a machine gun...
Jan. 19th, 2009 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaI've just come back from a movie.
Probably the most important move I've ever seen (or will see) my whole life.
Memory is something we're told to cherish and hold close to our hearts and to never let go of the memories.
Memories are who we are.
I've just come back from watching a movie.
It's an animated feature.
The genre is slippery; it could be a documentary, a biopic or even just your run of the mill (anti)war movie.
But it's not just any of those things.
It's a movie about what we don't want to deal with.
Waltz with Bashir is a movie about how we remember and don't remember and why.
Knowing the details of Sabra and Shatila, the Phalangists and Israel's own complicity in what happened doesn't prepare you for this fragmented tale of memory and the remembering of memories... not forgotten... just... gone away.
Not coherent I know.
I'm still speechless and weepy.
Remembering my own images of war - which were removed from me by cameras and screens and radio coms - the animation helps to keep the gory details away, just like memory filters away those terrible images and you remember them... but without the impact that will have you shaking and sobbing and vomiting.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write something that will make sense.
Maybe not.
If it's in a cinema near you... go see it.
Go.
Just... go.
Probably the most important move I've ever seen (or will see) my whole life.
Memory is something we're told to cherish and hold close to our hearts and to never let go of the memories.
Memories are who we are.
I've just come back from watching a movie.
It's an animated feature.
The genre is slippery; it could be a documentary, a biopic or even just your run of the mill (anti)war movie.
But it's not just any of those things.
It's a movie about what we don't want to deal with.
Waltz with Bashir is a movie about how we remember and don't remember and why.
Knowing the details of Sabra and Shatila, the Phalangists and Israel's own complicity in what happened doesn't prepare you for this fragmented tale of memory and the remembering of memories... not forgotten... just... gone away.
Not coherent I know.
I'm still speechless and weepy.
Remembering my own images of war - which were removed from me by cameras and screens and radio coms - the animation helps to keep the gory details away, just like memory filters away those terrible images and you remember them... but without the impact that will have you shaking and sobbing and vomiting.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write something that will make sense.
Maybe not.
If it's in a cinema near you... go see it.
Go.
Just... go.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-21 10:50 pm (UTC)It's not in his system.
I thought and felt that putting the "real life" footage when he "remembers" at the end of the film made the movie more than artsy and convenient.
More to the point the victims story isn't the one Folman was trying to tell - it should and needs to be told, but that wasn't his to tell, I think.
As for the catharsis... that was my own personal reaction, I know of some who left the movie appalled and in shock - because they had no idea what had actually happened at Sabra and Shatila.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-21 11:01 pm (UTC)he tells it none the less, though, intentionally or unintentionally. you might not agree with that. i'd be fine with leaving that at here if you want.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-21 11:03 pm (UTC)I'm glad you came here to comment, always good to have lots of voices and discussions.
Especially on issues that aren't spoken about enough.