Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

1More Film Blog

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
Waltz With Bashir (Folman, 2008)

Waltz With Bashir (Folman, 2008)

Last updated on: September 16, 2014 at 9:54 pm by Kenneth R. Morefield

Waltz With Bashir (Folman, 2008) 2014-09-16T21:54:23-05:00 Kenneth R. Morefield

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Waltz With Bashir

It it hard for me to know how I might have responded to this film if I hadn’t seen The Reader or Heartbeat Detector in the last few weeks.

Some of the responses (I’m talking in general, not about responses here) to those films, particularly the former appear to say it is not just wrong to excuse (or offer an excuse) for Nazi (or German…they’re always the same, right?) atrocities but even just to understand them or to try to talk about the context it which they occurred as part of the dialogue surrounding them.

In a survey, even an historical one, of atrocities, there are two categories, victims and perpetrators. There are no witnesses, nor are there people who are merely complicit. (What does it mean to be complicit but to look the other way? Silence is a form of consent that allows evil to flourish.)

Several times while watching Waltz With Bashir I thought about the notion that by the measure we judge we shall be weighed, and I don’t doubt that contributed to my dissatisfaction with the film.

I’m not sure how the film could have been other than what it was, but the repressed memory device ensures that the whole film (okay, well, 99% of it) remains squarely from the perspective of the Israeli yet assiduously avoids any apportionment of blame. What, I wondered, would be the response of a film about a traumatized German solider who represses his memory of participating in a massacre (the film’s word, not mine)? Of a white South African who tries to reconstruct repressed memories of Soweto? Of an American who tries to recall being at My Lai?

If may be true that such a film would offer up an excu…explanation that the person from whose perspective it was written (or shown) was young, and stupid, and afraid, and merely following orders. Would it, however, expect audiences to feel such unreflected sympathy for the person traumatized by the event absent much (any?) attempt to grapple with or own the fact that participation in such events makes one the oppressor not the victim? (Perhaps the only real analog I could find for the film might be James Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” which could only get away with focusing on the pain, rage, and empathy for the racist white sheriff because it was written by a Black American.)

“You were traumatized by the massacre before it happened” a friend tells the main character (or something close to that). This segues into some pop-psychology about the collective memory of the Holocaust the purport of which can be debated. Perhaps this scene is not meant as a “the Holocaust justifies everything” scene. Perhaps it means that having grown up with an historical narrative of victimization, the narrator cannot fathom a world in which events don’t conform to an archetypal pattern he’s been drilled to believe is the context for the only way of looking at the world.

After watching this film, I thought a lot about the third act of Bob Hercules’s incredible documentary, Forgiving Dr. Mengele. After Eva Mozes Kor forgives a prison guard, and later gives personal forgiveness to all Nazis, including the infamous doctor who experimented on her and killed her sister, she at first refuses and then reluctantly agrees to a meeting with some Palestinians. There is a truly frustrating disconnect in that part of the film, as Kor tries to explain that she can’t forgive the Palestinians because they are still actively trying to kill her; she seems unaware that the people she met with don’t want her forgiveness. They consider her the oppressor and (apparently mistakenly) think that she will understand their grievances.

I have never been to Israel. Someone I know and trust implicitly has, and in the wake of this film that person told me unless or until an American Christian goes to Israel he simply cannot fathom how completely, insistently, and totally the Israeli people are acculturated to accept an identity of victimhood. Given a history of Jewish persecution that is measured in millennia rather than decades, perhaps the narrator’s emphasis in the first half of the film on the sheer terror of war is meant less as a generic excuse and more as a (very, very, very, very, indirect) probing of the mindset that has to repress accountability even at the cost of memory. Perhaps the experience of fear has been so long it becomes ingrained and, at that point, the person never feels safe; even when victims subsequently find themselves in contexts where they have more power (and thus more relative safety) they often still feel as those they must maintain that upper hand or they will fall victim again. Thus the drive for feeling safer becomes a drive for maintaining the upper hand of power at all costs.

Accountability for what, precisely?

Accountability for what, though? Standing by and watching while the “Christian Philangist” militia did their exterminating for them? For sending up a flare? This hanging on to the “it was them not us” distinction to the very end may be historically accurate, but it strikes me as nevertheless being self-serving (the film up to that point shows the soldiers shooting up a car with little regard to whether or not civilians are inside of it, dumping bodies along with wounded who may not be dead, etc.) and the sort of rationales that is largely rejected in other contexts.

Am I saying Israel is unilaterally at fault for everything that is wrong with Arab-Jewish relations? Of course not. What I am saying is that absent an almost completely pro-Israel perspective, it is easy enough for me to see how some might find this film self-serving, perhaps even offensively so.

But there’s the rub. This film was made by an Israeli, funded by (I believe) a government grant, and selected by Israel to represent its country for the Academy Award consideration. Given the historic grievances perpetrated on the Jewish people, perhaps it is amazing that a generation after the camps that such a comparison (between the victimization of Jews in the camps and Arabs in Sabra) could be even whispered, even in a vague and indirect manner.

In his famous essay, “On Moral Equivalence“, Charles Krauthammer slams Jesse Jackson for calling Lebanon a “cycle of pain,” presumably because the cycle metaphor fails to distinguish retaliatory violence from attack or self defense from terrorism.

Not all acts of violence are created equal. Got it. So why do we (by which I mean “human beings” not necessary Jews, Christians, Arabs, or Atheists) cling so hard to the double standard that insists that everything we do is mitigated by history and context but everything done to us must be accounted for on a scale of moral absolutes?

In the final analysis, I don’t know if Waltz With Bashir simply lacked introspection (for all its narrative emphasis on reclaiming memory) and is thus a flawed film, or whether I’m just such a legalistic Pharisee that I’m looking at a glass half full and condemning it for not being overflowing. Perhaps if it weren’t being praised so widely and strongly, I might think the latter. As it is, I sort of felt watching the film like my wife must have felt after some arguments early in our marriage–you know in that moment after the dust has settled and the party you were fighting with has reconciled himself to the situation and talked through his motivations and explained his (flawed but he assures you basically decent) intentions and demonstrated contrition and maybe even done penance but, well, never actually said “I was wrong.”

This post originally appeared at All Things Ken.

Reviews

Ari Folman

Forgiving Dr. Mengele

Waltz With Bashir

Previous Post

July 24, 2009

The Informer (Ford, 1935)

Next Post

July 26, 2009 Forgiving Dr. Mengele (Hercules, 2006)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Years Later 1999 Top 5 2007 Top 10 2008 Favorite Discoveries 2008 Top 10 2009 Favorite Discoveries 2009 Top 10 2010 Favorite Discoveries 2010 Top 10 2011 Top 10 2012 Top Ten 2013 Top Ten 2014 Top Ten Best Picture Winners Christian Spotlight on Entertainment Christianity Today Coming Soon Disclosure Disclosure--AS Disclosure--Book Disclosure--DVDS Disclosure--SEOL Disclosure--Travel Dissenting Opinion Elsewhere Emergenetics Essays Featured Film Fest DC--2014 Film Festivals Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 Headline Interviews Laura on the Oscar Winners Podcasts Quick Impressions Reviews RiverRun Film Festival 2014 Television The Criterion Collection The Thin Place To Stream or Not to Stream? Top 10s and Other Lists Toronto International Film Festival 2009 Toronto International Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Toronto International Film Festival 2013 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Uncategorized Video Virginia Film Festival 2011 Virginia Film Festival 2013 Women's Film Festival 2012

Select a Month February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did Aaron make for the people while Moses was on the mountain?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A golden calf A wooden idol An altar A silver snake