Harry's Place Arts

I have a dim recollection of am English period drama on TV where events are seen through the eyes of an ill treated horse.

Black Beauty, surely? It’s one of only two books (I barely remember the TV adaptation) which are guaranteed to reduce me to tears, the other being Watership Down.

I don’t think it was Black Beauty.

I’m sure the period drama seen through the eyes of the horse was Black Beauty.

It played a major role in the emotional history of many a young English-speaking child of a certain age, in that it certainly did reduce almost all of its readers to tears; interestingly, the key tear-jerker scene was over the death of a once proud and beautiful female horse, Ginger, reduced to street traffic and brutalization. For most of us, it was probably the first experience we had of weeping spontaneously over the death of someone or something otherwise unconnected to us.

I’ve read “War Horse” by Michael Morpurgo, though I haven’t seen the play, and I’m sure that consciously or unconsciously it was a reworking of the Black Beauty story applied to the tragedy of the First World War. He apparently saw a painting of a horse that was sold for service in World War I and heard the story from an old WWI veteran of how this happened to a whole bunch of horses in the area he lives in. Like Black Beauty, it has themes of a young horse separated from an idyllic early life, and ultimately restored to it after going through terrible ordeals, of a profound friendship with a beautiful comrade who goes down to a horrible death etc.

As for the horses in Waltz with Bashir (which I saw last night and thought excellent), I think part of the reason that their fate seems so distressing and more upsetting than that of the soldiers in the film is that they had absolutely no choice and took no sides in the conflict; there was no possibility that there was any “us” or “home” that they could identify with, and no country that they could feel part of. They had no understanding of what had happened to them or the utter hopelessness of their situation, no possible comfort in hopes for a better future. With human actors, even children, there is almost always some element of hope or belief that others will inherit what has been snatched from them.

Judy, I think you and Mrs Trellis are right; it must have been Black Beauty.

Some anti semite Brits like Waltz with Basir, though only the veteran critc of the Observer, Philic French was reasonable. He said, “What we have here are atrocities comparable with many on the Eastern Front in the Second World War that form part of the Holocaust…

But we must note that a similar inquiry could not have taken place in any Arab country, nor a film like Ari Folman’s be made there.”

Other Brits love to establishes parallels with the Nazis.

.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/waltz-with-bashir–ari-folman-91-mins-18-1030795.html

Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman, 91 mins, 18

A brave animated documentary digs into Israel’s psyche in a gripping account of an infamous massacre

Reviewed by Jonathan Romney
Sunday, 23 November 2008

Folman has inevitably been criticised for making his film from the point of view of traumatised Israelis, rather than directly about the victims of massacre. But he’s talking about what he knows, from the perspective directly available to him. Waltz with Bashir is anything but a denial of guilt: given authority by veteran war reporter Ron Ben-Yishai, the film unambiguously points the finger of accusation at Ariel Sharon. Folman directly implicates himself and his army comrades, however unaware of events they were at the time. And he explicitly establishes parallels with the Holocaust, notably in the images of Phalangists herding Palestinians on to trucks. Waltz with Bashir comes across as a sincere, personal and deeply painful undertaking that lets neither its maker nor his nation off the hook. It’s a brave and necessary film, remarkably inventive and, against all odds, grimly entertaining too.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/inde … _bashir_15

. Waltz With Bashir (15)
(Thursday 20 November 2008)
Directed by Ari Folman

FORGOTTEN DEATH: Waltz With Bashir (15).

An animated documentary offers a personal take on the brutal 1982 Lebanon war. JEFF SAWTELL examines this unusual film.

CRITICS seem to be agreed that Waltz With Bashir is an extraordinary film because it accuses Israel of war crimes during its occupation of Lebanon in 1982.

Even more extraordinary is the fact that, according to writer, director and producer Ari Folman, it got government promotion because “they thought it showed Israel as a tolerant country.”

This is a country that employed terrorism to annexe Palestine and then waged war on its neighbours to expand its territory and establish itself as an apartheid state.

However, although Waltz With Bashir criticises the massacres and claims to be anti-war, it doesn’t expand on Israel’s current disregard for civilised values.

. Israel has used delusions of victimhood to achieve this, even rewriting massacre out of its history.

We, Israelis may feel proud that one of our film did it in London. But many Jews don’t understand that praise and success doesn’t mean understaing Israel. Sometime it just help to enforce demonising of Israel this time by Jewish own striptease.

One British blog from today:

Waltz with Bashir
Reading the world news, I am often appalled by the actions of the Israeli armed forces. In fact, I’ve got a firm, recurrent irritation going on… and I sometimes wonder if I could be accused, then, of being anti-Semitic. Of course, I would retort that I am not against Jewish people in general, but more specifically against some particular actions and policies of the State of Israel. Perhaps, though, my accuser would respond that the State of Israel is the ultimate expression of Jewish identity, or Jewish destiny, so that to be against Israel is to be against Jews, and ispo facto anti-Semitic.

But enough sophistry. I was talking about Israel, because last night I saw Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli film investigating peoples’ experiences of the 1982 war in Lebanon, and in particular the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The film is partly about what it is like for a young person to go to war, partly about the way that these same people, when older, tuck their memories away in a locked room, and partly about the moral responsibility that Israel may bear for the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. In some moments, the film compares the actions of the Israeli army to the actions of the Nazis in massacering Jews. (Art director David Polonsky disputes what exactly is being suggested in the film – but the Israel/Nazi comparison seems indisputably present, in some way, even if it is not endorsed as a good comparison.)

Watching this film helped me to ask myself more clearly: What exactly do I think of Israel? Do I blame the Jewish people? Has all this got something to do with their religion? And indeed, Waltz made me notice more explicitly that my angry reaction to world news reports may be somehow connected with thoughts about the Holocaust. I am more appalled by Israeli violence, because I think that the Israelis were so recently, as a people, the victims of violence… so I somehow expect them to be wiser or more compassionate than other nations. But does the Holocaust mean that the Jewish people have some other set of ethics and responsibilities in the face of conflict? Can they be expected to be extra-pacifist just because they suffered the most brutal massacre in history?

I wonder whether these questions can be pondered openly in mainstream Israeli society. And will Waltz for Bashir make questioning more possible for those people, as it has for me?

Again, returned to the recent interview with Polonsky:

How has the response been to Waltz With Bashir?

“In Israel? It was very, very good. Much better than we had expected, mainly because it’s animated, it skipped over the usual responses whether lefty or righty. We were expecting the accusations of Leftyism, but we were surprised when some film critics felt we weren’t taking enough responsibility for the massacres.

“For me, it was very moving to see people from different political views coming out of the film and saying ‘This is a very moving experience.’ Of course there are some people saying, ‘Why are we accusing ourselves?’ but mostly people view it as a work of art, which is good.”

This is a film that brings things to the surface. Many things. Maybe different things for different people. Go watch it, unless you are afraid to know what you really think.

Jerusalemite: I also noted Philip French’s remarks with satisfaction. The Nazi reference was inevitably going to render the creators’ intentions hostage to fortune. I heard someone, probably Polonsky on BBC radio Front Row saying it was not at all meant to be a comparison or parallel of Israel’s role with Nazis, but rather to relate how witnessing the event resonated emotionally with Folman because of his parents’ history. Unfortunately, the parallels will be made.

So how this film “success” going to help us?

I saw Waltz with Bashir last night. I thought the film was awesome. I am not a fan of cinema and as such I do not see that much. I was reluctantly dragged along by some friends to see the film, but from the moment it started until the final scenes, I was spellbound.

Regarding the business about Auschwitz in the film, I did not see it as a Zionist Nazi equivalence argument but precisely how Ami comments that she heard someone on BBC radio saying what it was meant to mean.

Not everything in Israel’s history is a proud moment and the Sabra and Shatilla massacre is something that Israelis have to deal with in a similar way that Americans have to deal with what occurred at My Lai in 1968.

I would urge anybody to see that film. According to Robert Fisk:

It is Folman’s dream that this film should be shown in an Arab country – given the dotage and stupidity of most Arab ministers, that is surely a hope that will not be realised.

This is a terrible shame as like Folman, I would like this film to shown at least in Lebanon.

Thanks for the Fisk link Mikey- a rare occasion, Fisk writes something worth reading.

Ami, what did you think of Waltz with Bashir?

Hauntingly beautiful and intense pathos yet the dialogue authentic with that familiar Israeli lacon tone. I don’t know if you noticed the description of the beginning of the killings by one interviewee- he used the words kol simcha vesason. It was translated as everything was a mess. There was no way the utter ironic opposite meaning as intended by the speaker would have translated literally. The grace of the animation of the fantasy woman’s hands as they arced in backstroke through the water was incredible. The figures of the young men in the dream scene as they walked out of the water – so vulnerably naked except for their dog tags- those lurching reminders of the necessity of ID in case those slight bodies become corpses.

Because I am not a fan of cinema, I did not pay too much attention to some of things that you mention, what I thought was fabulous was the soundtrack. The song “Bok a Tov Lebanon” that they were singing in the tank was very powerful. I assume that song was a genuine song from 1982, anyone know?

Guys, Fisk remark was written before he saw the film. He wrote it during Cannes festival, look the date. I’m not sure he would like the film when he will see it. Becuse the film highlight Fisk’s 25 years lies about Israel “direct responsibility” (supposedly quoting Khan enquiry) while the film show as the Khan report ,which he regulary misquote, “indirect responsibility”. So much that many ppl taking all their knowledge from “our man in Beirut” believe so. Many thinks it was the Israelis who kill.

Fisk was in Beirut when the film mada a buzz in Cannes. He wrote about a film he didn’t see.

Jerusalemite,

Forget about what others think of the film for a moment, what did YOU think of it?

The “other thing” is what matters more. Israelis love films about IDF and this film has some fine IDF speakers (love the part of Frenkel, he is quintessential IDF soldier in his laconic Hebrew ). Any IDF film in Israel will going to succeed, Even lame ones like Bufor or Two Fingers from Sidon etc. The problem is when our cultural input is crossing the border. Than you have the classic Jewish striptease circumstances. Historically, this striptease is what feeds European antisemitism like sado maso game. Ari Folman had to know it. Things that understandable here (a traumatised soldier feels betray is known serious theme) transfered differently on other states. Britain is hot bed for anti Israel campaigners and they will pick from the film what Ari Folman as decent ex-IDF soldier and son of Holocaust sorvivers does’t mean. Just as he didn’t mean to help the Phalengists in their killing spree with his lighting grenades. He is unintentionally help the anti semites. I thought we are under cultural academic boycott, so what happened? Things would seem different if Britain has good will towards Israel.

BTW, have you notice that Fisk is strangely quite? He made a career out of Sabra and Shatile massacre ( a massacre that was one of many in Lebanon civil war, all between the Lebanese). That note you quote was while ago. It’ll be interesting to read his take on the film. As I say many believe (reading Fiskie obsession) that the Israelis themselves did the killing, in fact it was neglect og our side. Great regret but it’s not like to kill.

Personally, I understand the soldiers trauma. But from afar it seems to me that the Palestinians (who started the Lebanese Civil War by their own massacre against the Christians) had in Sabra and Shatila massacre some taste of their own medicine. Really. My own traumas led to other massacres committed by the Palestinians here in Jerusalem. I was very close to Sbarro bombing in 2003 end so on. This Sbarro massacre had a Palestinian artistic celebration in Al Nagh Univeristy of Nablus. With body parts amongs Pizza plates exhibited proudly. No Walz with Bashir- style soul searching of their part.

Jerusalemite: Agree withe verything you have just said about the perils of exporting such a film outside of Israel, about Sbarro and the rest.

Other drama makers are aware of this danger. I heard an interview yesterday with the director of Osage County, a Steppenwolf play which is about to open in London. She said when it transferred from the Midwest to New York, they modified parts where it was one thing for Midwesterners to laugh at themselves, but they didn’t want New Yorkers laughing at them. They have modified it further for these reasons for London. Israelis are still somewhat naive about this.

I can’t find a reference to Boker Tov Levanon to see if it is an authentic song from the campaign, on imdb or elsewhere.

Jerusalemite,

Forget about other matters for a minute, what Israelis think, the writings of Robert Fisk, what happened at Sbarro, etc., etc., what did you think about the film?

I don’t understand your question just because the film is well made, is it omit its naive and simplicity? I like almost any IDF film. I enjoyed this one too. IDF is great sexy theme. It is a win win thing for any film director out there. But I don’t forget the overall context.

Thanks for that, I’d seen waltzing billed as ‘powerful anti-war animation’ and consequently decided to avoid it, now I’m thinking about seeing it.

Fwliw there was a black beauty film adaptation in the early 70′s that preserved the books first person narration iirc but the kids TV series from the same time was standard 3rd person…
Sorta Champion the wonderhorse meets Heartbeat in upper middle class Victorian rural Herts.

I see that one commenter on imdb has misread the horse incident as: Israelis are so callous they care about horses but not people. *sigh*

Jon d: I didn’t see it as anti or pro war; just, this is what war looks like, through the eyes of some of its participants.

“Concerning the war I say nothing – the only thing that wrings my heart & soul is the thought of the horses – oh! my beloved animals – the men – and women can go to hell – but my horses; – I walk round & round this room cursing God for allowing dumb brutes to be tortured – let Him kill his human beings but how CAN HE?
Oh, my horses.”
Edward Elgar

“Thanks for that, I’d seen waltzing billed as ‘powerful anti-war animation’ and consequently decided to avoid it, now I’m thinking about seeing it.”

Jon d, yes do watch it. But I don’t understand your post.

Wasn’t there a german philosopher who got all upset about a horse?

By the way, at the end of WW1 the British army was so sentimental about its horses that it flogged the vast majority to French butchers rather than ferry them back over the channel.

Jerusalemite: I thought from the billing I read that it sounded like a pacifist finger wagger and I don’t usually enjoy that sort of thing. That’s all I meant.

It is pacifist finger wagger

The horse is the Russian people, chevre.