I just wonder given the climate of hatred prevailing in art houses and 'intellectual circles' what sort of self loathing the Israeli's have a penchant for, I still want to go show my support. Who knows, maybe my knuckledragging could provide some balance. God Love The Irish, Eh?
I'll post something more about this later. Also, I am blogging from a phone. Isn't that CRAZY? Huh.
Heh,back. This film was quite interesting, about the Sabra Massacre of Palestinians during the Lebanon War. The tease was about a haunted memory of an Israeli Soldier revealed to him through a reaccurring nightmare in which he is relentlessly hunted down by a pack of merciless zombie dogs. The dream is a metaphor for the theme which is a darkened memory of a horrible massacre. Some critiques I had read of this technique the director chose along the lines of 'A Scanner Darkly,' or Rotoscopy which renders actual film to flat color fields and line shadowing found in graphic novels.
The supposed twist is how the child in us is led down a devious path which juxtposes sugar fueled memories of Saturday mornings of enraptured innocence. I'd have to say such criticism is completely useless to decide if a film is actually worth seeing. With the film I just watched, the graphic schtick is useful from another direction that plays off the nature of memory. There is a potent argument for the function of memory in human psyche to be made and this film makes it, how could implanted memories work, or how something could be misremembered or forgotten entirely. The argument of
Waltz With Bashir is the plausible deniability of the IDF that the Philangists were carrying these murders out without IDF knowlege. There is none of the usual pathetic leftist mewlings about 'The Plight' and none but the seemingly honest search for search for an accounting of the reality and the experience of brutality in war.
The film does an honest job of grabbing you by the gut and raising the blade to your throut. I'd like to think that the surrealities that emerge out of the darkness that envelopes things that do not ordinarily deserve to see the light of day, serve to portray the fractured nature of reality a fraction of a second, or a millimeter away from oblivion.
My personal take on
Waltz With Bashir originated in realizing that even though the fact of the massacre is undeniable, the first days of the Iraqi Freedom were spent by me defending a comment section of a then emerging Milblog genre from the rabid lunacy of the left. One unfortunate memory of those online arguments centered on the irresponsibility of the IDF in allowing the christians to murder the innocent and the jews culpability in allowing it to happen.
My research focused on the double standard inherent in asymetrical Rules Of Engagement. From time immemorial, the enemy was driven from their homes the men were killed and the women and children hauled off to slavery or worse. So soon from even Vietnam that it was considered a crime against mankind that woman and children were victims. What kind of madness is it that we can use these tragedies to overburden meaning itself? It is a moral good that wars when fought are expedient in eliminating the enemies will to fight, rules that you win war by destroying the enemy and drive his future into dust in front of his woman and with extreme prejudice. There are no appeals mercy either, unless the argument furthers the goal of eliminating the enemy of his will to fight. Is there an such thing as a merciful day of war? Pa-leeese, what EU dandy dreamed up such a fancypants idea?
As a Christian and a keen observer of humanity, I'd just like to point out that though we strive to live the beatitudes, we are horrible at it and we do a whole lot better thinking in terms of the Old Testament. It should be decreed again from every home and hearth that honesty is far less cruel a virtue than mantaining falsehoods in order to appease one's chaotic emotions and to never, ever, allow one drop of life's precious blood in appeasement of the soft tyranny of fraternity and industrialization of victims.
It is clear that the Left and Academia's vilification of America, its barely disguised hatred of all things pax Americana, that some sort of derangement was brewing. Why does the Left have this fascination, with supporting terror, the use of terror and the suppression of Zionism? Because to the Left, America has no moral imperative except to be wrong, evil and die. Quite simple really. There is nothing else to concern yourself with and any means necessary to win against the hated 'right' is doing a service for good, such as lying, fabrication of News, villification of war heroes, the subtle mockery of the intelligence of the dead, the fawning over petty murderous dictators, the outright lust of the suppression of all freedoms of these putrid dictators.
This excused a lot of aberrant behavior and also explains a whole lot about what is being left out of any meaningful discussion of exactly who are the enemies to our precious way of life. Either Israel and the IDF are evil and should be wiped out by any means necessary, or that the lies of Liberalism must be brutally exposed and held to extreme prejudice. We are in a battle for our very life's blood.
