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Like (2)Review of the film "Waltz with Bashir" (2008)
Review of the film "Waltz with Bashir" (2008)
Contemporary Jewish Review. London: Maney.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad [in print]. ‘Review Article of the Film Waltz with Bashir (2008)’. Contemporary Jewish Review. London: Maney.
Keywords:
ואלס עם בשיר
ארי פולמן
עמוס עוז
מנחם בגין
אריאל שרון
ABSTRACT
Ariel Sharon was waltzing not Matilda (although he did possess many sheep) but Bashir Jumayel (interpretable in Arabic as "the handsome of the handsomes"), drawn into a fatal symbiosis with the Christian phalangists, who hated Palestinians as much as Sharon did. That’s one of the two reasons for the film title. The literal reason is seen clearly in one of the scenes in the film itself.
As opposed to what one might expect, this film is NOT about Middle Eastern politics. Neither is it about war heroism; the soldiers are miserable. The film is PSYCHOLOGICAL. It is about Kafkaesque existence, personal surreal dreams, self-introspection, memory repression, and denial. DENIAL is not a river in Egypt. It’s a massacre in Lebanon. In Zur Genealogie der Moral ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that forgetfulness is an active process. The role of active oblivion is that of a concierge: to shut the doors and windows of unbearable consciousness.
The film is SURREAL. For example, it has a scene in which Israeli soldiers occupy a lavish, luxurious villa between fighting. The officer, apparently a PORN-AGAIN JEW, is watching a German pornographic film. (For some reason, in the 1980s almost all porn movies in Israel were imported from Germany). The officer tells the soldier ‘taavir, taavir’ “fast forward, fast forward’ because he wants to get to the point, to the crux, in which the German man performs a doggy on the German woman. There is no time for foreplay!
What Ari Folman, the talented autobiographic director and narrator of the film, does in the film is a little bit like what that officer does when watching the porn movie: he wants to get to the crux: the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
I initially thought an animated documentary as a simulacrum was an oxymoron. But paradoxically, it is more authentic given the complexity.
The grip: All wars are ugly, let alone long wars consisting of occupation and policing of civilians.
REVIEW
In the 1950s, when Israeli author Amos Oz was in his early teens, he once sat with his father and grandfather, along with other right-wing Israelis, in the front row at an event where a speech was given by Menachem Begin.
Like many right-wing politicians of the time, Begin spoke Israeli, a.k.a. ‘Modern Hebrew’, with a classical layer. The front three rows were mainly intellectuals, but the people behind them, the great majority of the audience, were working-class immigrants to Israel, and they spoke ‘street Israeli’ of the Jerusalem area.
In classical Hebrew, though not in the Jerusalem vernacular, the word זין záyin meant ‘weapon’ as ‘weapons of mass destruction’. In Israeli, however, זין záin acquired a new meaning – and please forgive my risqué authenticity, after all, Waltz with Bashir is a very authentic film – ‘dick, penis’, as it is the first letter of zanáv ‘tail’, which was a loan translation of the Yiddish word שוואַנץ shvants, which means both ‘tail’ and ‘dick’. Thus, Hebrew לזיין lezayén ‘to arm, to provide somebody with weapons’ acquired a new meaning in Israeli: ‘to screw’ or simply ‘to do the f-word’.
Begin, a great orator – who, again, spoke Hebrew with a classical layer – was attacking the readiness of the great powers to arm the Arabs.
In rising melodic cadence, Begin was complaining that Eisenhower and Anthony Eden were ‘arming’ Nasser, the Egyptian leader. ‘The whole world is “arming” our Arab enemies day and night!’ כל העולם כולו מזיין יומם ולילה את אויבינו הערבים. ‘But who is “arming” us?’ Begin asked in an outraged voice. ‘Nobody! Absolutely nobody!’ A stunned silence filled the hall. Begin did not notice. He went on to predict: ‘If I am to become prime minister everyone would be “arming” us!’. לו אני הייתי ראש הממשלה כעת – כולם, כולם היו מזיינים אותנו!! כו-לם!!
A pitter-patter of applause came from the Zionist intellectuals in the front three rows. Most of the audience, however, maintained a stunned and horrified silence, thinking to themselves ‘We have been screwed enough!’
Why do I mention this story in a review of the powerful film ‘Waltz with Bashir’? For THREE main reasons:
I. Let me begin with Begin: Begin, an intellectual, did not notice what was happening under his nose. During the 1982 Lebanon War, he was Israel’s Prime Minister. His plan was to occupy a 40 km security zone in Lebanon – in order to “cleanse” the missile range used by Palestinians against Israel’s northern towns. But Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, developed a fantastical and megalomaniac plan: to occupy the Lebanon as far as Beirut, including Beirut, and to appoint as President of Lebanon his Christian ally, Bashir Jumayel.
BASHIR in Arabic means ‘missionary’, as well as ‘handsome’, and Jumayel also has to do with beauty (jamil is ‘handsome’ too), and as you can see in the movie, Bashir Jumayel was indeed a very handsome Christian.
Sharon was, in fact, waltzing not Matilda (although he does possess many sheep) but Bashir, drawn into a fatal symbiosis with the Christian phalangists, who hated Palestinians as much as Sharon did. That’s one of the two reasons why the film is called Waltz with Bashir. The literal reason is seen clearly in one of the scenes in the film itself.
II. Multi-layeredness: As opposed to what one might expect, this film is by and large NOT about Middle Eastern politics. For example, it does not interview Palestinians or Phalangists who slaughtered Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Neither is it about war heroism; the soldiers are miserable. Just like the Israeli language, where one word has many layers and thus can be understood totally differently by two speakers, this film has many strata. The film is much more psychological than political. It is about Kafkaesque existence, personal surreal dreams, self-introspection, memory repression, and denial. DENIAL is not a river in Egypt. It’s a massacre in Lebanon. In Zur Genealogie der Moral ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that forgetfulness is an active process. The role of active oblivion is that of a concierge: to shut the doors and windows of unbearable consciousness.
III. The literal meaning-arm>screw: The pornography of war: The film is SURREAL. For example, it has a scene in which Israeli soldiers occupy a lavish, luxurious villa between fighting. The officer, apparently a PORN-AGAIN JEW, is watching a German pornographic film. (For some reason, in the 1980s almost all porn movies in Israel were imported from Germany). The officer tells the soldier ‘taavir, taavir’ “fast forward, fast forward’ because he wants to get to the point, to the crux, in which the German man performs a doggy on the German woman. There is no time for foreplay!
Interestingly, whereas Ari Folman, the talented autobiographic director and narrator of the film, in his real life remembered some things from the time of the war but totally disassociated himself from the most important part, the crux: the Sabra and Shatila massacre by the Christian phalangists (although he indirectly contributed to it as Israel controlled the area and fired flares which assisted the phalangists). What he does in the film is a little bit like what that officer does when watching the porn movie: he wants to get to the crux!
The disassociation of the young soldiers from the war is obviously apparent already in the war itself – not only after it – as is apparent in the film, for example in the scene in the Beirut International Airport Terminal.
When Ari, the director-narrator, goes home for a brief holiday he sees that in Tel Aviv, ‘life continues as if nothing’ החיים ממשיכים כאילו כלום: parties, drugs, discotheques. I beg to differ. I would actually argue that life in Israel does not continue as if nothing happens. People live to the full, a hectic life, as if there is no tomorrow, as if there’s no God – to employ the Israeli expression – not because of indifference (‘as if nothing happens) but rather due to saturation, wish to escape, which is, in fact, a reaction to the unbearable situation of continuous war.
That said, this disassociation between the fighters and the rest of the society is a painful point in Israeli history. The First Lebanon War is the mini-Vietnam of Israel. It was a defining moment within Israeli society. Until then wars were brief and for survival. This one consisted of occupation and policing of civilians, resulting in atrocities.
A personal note: I was in my early teens during the war and remember it like yesterday. Between watching one TV series and another, I remember the laconism in which of the fallen soldiers and their photos were introduced one after the other. A lady I knew well could not sleep at night because her son was in Lebanon and she was afraid he would get killed. Well, he survived the war physically... This film is about people like him.
The SOUND TRACK is spectacular, combining exquisite CLASSICAL pieces with ROCK music.
I initially thought an ‘animated documentary’ as a simulacrum was an oxymoron. But paradoxically, the fact that Waltz with Bashir is animated allows it to be even more authentic, given its complex analysis of the psyche! Do not forget that it took FOUR years to make this film.
The grip: All wars are ugly, let alone long wars consisting of occupation and policing of civilians.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
Ghil'ad ZUCKERMANN, D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (Cambridge) (titular), M.A. (Tel Aviv) (summa cum laude), is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (a.k.a. ‘Lucky Country’). He was born in Israel (a.k.a. ‘Promised Land’) in 1971. After studying at the United World College of the Adriatic (Duino, Trieste, Italy, 1987-1989) and serving in the Israel Defence Forces (1989-1993), he was selected for the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, where he studied philosophy, psychology, classics, literature, law and mathematics, and specialized in linguistics, receiving his M.A. (summa cum laude) from the Department of Linguistics in 1997. As Scatcherd European Scholar of the University of Oxford and Denise Skinner Graduate Scholar of St Hugh's College, Oxford, he gained his D.Phil. (Oxon.), entitled 'Camouflaged Borrowing: "Folk-Etymological Nativization" in the Service of Puristic Language Engineering', in 2000. In 2000-2004 he was Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Studies, University of Cambridge. He received a titular Ph.D. (Cantab.) in 2003. He has taught in Israel, Singapore, UK, USA and Australia; and has held senior research posts in Melbourne, Austin (Texas), Bellagio (Italy) and Tokyo. His publications – e.g. in English, Israeli, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese – include the bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli, a Beautiful Language: Herbrew as Myth) (Am Oved 2008), and Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan 2003). His website is http://www.zuckermann.org/