The graphic novel style of this film is quite striking and entirely successful in terms of mimicking that form of aesthetic presentation. There is also much black humor here - especially of the pornographic kind - yet, amid the ugliness there is much beauty. This is perhaps a better way to show such unpleasantness since fully explicit live action would possibly be too sickening to watch and defeat the movie's objective by making us turn away from that which the filmmaker wants us to closely observe.
This film is essentially about forgetting what you do not want to remember and remembering what you do – even some twenty years after the event. These dissociative memories are the mind's attempt to escape both fearful experiences and their long term consequences, particularly guilt. Yet, at the same time – as the film carefully and cleverly points out – we seek out these suppressed recollections for fear that if we do not, we shall go mad with not knowing. Crazy also from not understanding what is really going on inside ourselves and from what happened to us in the past that made us whom we are now. This slyly mirrors the Socratic dictum: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Politically, this semi documentary memoir is a critique of Israel's violent and indiscriminate self defense policy and the resultant activities of the IDF. Especially, the IDF's complicity in the Christian Phalangist massacres of Palestinians in Beirut in 1982. A truly haunting exploration of memory and guilt and of the link between the two.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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