War at the movies
June 18, 2008
Seeing a movie in the theater isn’t the kind of thing that should vary too much from one country to another. You go, you sit in the dark, you eat popcorn, you watch the movie, and then you leave. As long as the subtitles are in English, why should it matter if you are in France or Russia or Jordan or wherever? But last night when Helen and I went to see a new Israeli movie called Waltz With Bashir, the fact that we were sitting in a movie theater full of Israelis entirely changed the way I thought about the film.
Waltz With Bashir is an animated documentary about the filmmaker’s struggle to sort through his memories of being a 19-year-old Israeli soldier fighting in Lebanon in 1982. At first he can’t remember anything, but then he probes the far reaches of his memory by conducting interviews with fellow soldiers and psychologists. The truth—if you insist on calling it that—he dredges up is harrowing. Waltz With Bashir is in many ways a classic anti-war movie; it deals with the inhumanity of warfare, the absurdity of wars being fought by teenagers, the trauma that it inflicts on the soldiers. But the movie conveys its message originally and thoughtfully. I would have appreciated Waltz With Bashir even if I had seen it in the comfort of my living room in Montclair, New Jersey.
At the end of the movie I stood up to leave and looked around at the crowd in the theater with me. Many of the moviegoers were middle aged, about the same age as the filmmaker. Among them there must have been at least one who fought in Lebanon, I thought to myself, one who could relate to the memories that the film depicts. If I had seen Waltz With Bashir back at Oberlin, it would still have been a powerful movie, but having seen it in Jerusalem lent the themes a far greater immediacy.
Life in Israel-Palestine is quiet right now, though it would never really be described as peaceful. Israel and Hamas are set to begin their ceasefire tomorrow; terrorists haven’t attacked in a while (aside from the rockets that continue to fall from Gaza) and the Israeli Army hasn’t launched a major offensive for a few months (though they continue to bomb targets in Gaza). But conflict is never too far away here: potentially on the ground, always in people’s memories.
what about zohan at the movies? you see it yet?
Have you read Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah? I know he went to Oberlin yaddayaddayadda, so you’re probably way ahead of me here, but I just read it. Unlike you two, while reading about a former boy soldier I wasn’t in a room filled with former boy soldiers, but I do live in Bed Stuy, right across the street from a middle school. It’s seriously the 4th season of the wire moved to brooklyn. (Max, Helen you know what I’m talking about). Anyway, the corner kid phenom is totally real here. I see it everyday walking to the subway. These kids aren’t starving, playing with grenades, or crawling through piles of dead bodies so as not get shot by rebels. But like Beah, the have lost fathers/mothers/sisters/brothers/friends to ‘the game’(jail or death)and are frequently forced to do the morally questionable to maintain their position in the street. I think i felt the same way at the end of the book as you did at the end of Waltz with Bashir. Maybe. Anyway, all the way over here in Brooklyn, I feel you.