By N.P. Thompson
Impossible to follow, and even less possible to admire or to give a damn about, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir waltzes in on the theme of what happens to young men, doltish, subservient, and carefree, once they’ve become haunted, middle-aged men, no longer able to live with or justify the horrors they perpetuated in their youth. Folman doesn’t really develop that, however; instead, he’s made a convoluted cartoon “documentary” about the lingering after-effects of the Israeli-Lebanon war of the early 1980s. For the first half-hour or so, the movie has just enough stunning imagery to distract from the foxholes in Folman’s storytelling.
For example, two veterans sit in a bar in the present day, one relating his recurrent nightmares from the war; behind them, a gentle rain pattern falls within a window’s boxy silhouette. Outside, when the men embrace in farewell, the rain has turned to pelting snow. One drives off, leaving his friend facing a cordoned-off large body of water, the waves lapping toward him, which triggers the memory/flashback of these men as gaunt soldiers emerging from below the waves, naked except for dog tags, advancing like damaged gods on a shore of apocalyptically bright, joyless yellow. Folman here imparts an epic sense of tragedy, particularly in the point-of-view stemming from a body that floats along on the water’s surface, its legs and feet lolling in the waves. The writer-producer-director unfortunately returns to this flashback three times (at least) so that the rawness gradually loses its force.
What burdens the movie beyond comprehensibility, however, lies in Folman’s choice to frame the narrative self-referentially. He’s a character in it, as well, and there were times, in his subsequent conversations with other former Israeli military or interviews with psychiatrists, when I couldn’t discern whether he was telling his own story or Boaz’s (the man in the bar in the opening sequence) or a blend of the two.
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To read the rest of the article at Movies Into Film, click here.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Knife-sharpening on lumps of coal: Some notes on Waltz with Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, and Wall-E
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8 comments:
Uh... Wow. I hold all three of these films in high regard. To each his own, I guess. Good reading, though. Thompson might be a good alternative to White for my daily dose of seething criticism that runs contrary to my own.
Of all the reviews I've read of "Bashir," even the less-than-rapturous ones, this is the first to contain a complaint about not quite being able to follow it.
This tells you pretty much all you need to know about Thompson.
Wow indeed. Thompson should maybe think about outpatient mental health care.
I find it annoying that the writing about 'Bashir' contains both a criticism that the film was 'impossible to follow', and an admission that the writer 'tuned the movie out'.
"an ex-friend of mine glibly explained to me ... I suppose a schizophrenic with no taste might easily be narcotized into adopting such a zeitgeist-y point of view"
Nice! Who is this ex friend dude?
Thompson certainly loves slaughtering those sacred cows. The comment about the ugliness of everything to come from Pixar is a nice touch, but these sort of reviews beg the question: what recent movies are beautiful? Which ones are great in a way that these movies could never hope to be? Even Fernando Croce usually includes a movie that he loved that everyone else thought was mediocre. I'm curious to know in which direction you would point me.
I'm unclear on the nature of Thompson's criticism of Wendy and Lucy. Moving roughly by paragraph:
1) Reichardt (like Van Sant) films the Northwest as an ugly place; Thompson disagrees.
2) Lucy is too healthy. (An interesting point, this.)
3) & 4) Mostly plot recapitulation, with some boredom at Reichardt's choice of grainy filmstock. Also, Thompson is not sympathetic to Wendy. (See #5)
5) Wendy isn't developed as a character -- she's only an idea. The prenthetical reference to Bresson here (Reichardt's advice to Williams) is intriguing, and I'd argue it is central to the review. But one has to follow the link to see Thompson's pan of Balthazar, suggesting that Thompson disdains both Reichardt and Bresson. But it is unclear why -- especially since the linked review criticizes Bresson's use of religious symbolism (not relevant in the Reichardt review) and does not address his direction of actors (relevant to the Reichardt review).
I'm willing to hear out Thompson on this point that Wendy is underdeveloped as a character, but he doesn't give a single example of how she is more idea-driven than character-driven. Does she rant about the Bush cuts at some point? Does she agitate for universal health care? Give me something to work with here.
6) The film does have one composition Thompson finds beautiful.
7) Reichardt's movie is phony.
I mostly get from the review that Thompson doesn't like low-budget filmmakers (explaining Reichardt setting the story in the near present, and possibly explaining her choice of filmstock) with liberal sensibilities. I just don't get why. Beyond the detail about Lucy (and I do think that is a telling detail) what is so strikingly phony about Reichardt's approach here? What aspects of Wendy's plight does Thompson find unrealistic and (overly) manipulatively developed on Reichardt's part? What is the hard truth she is avoiding?
While following Thompson's thoughts in his review of Wall-E, I was reminded of the final sentence of his preceding review: "It’s phoniness masquerading as hard truth."
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