waltz with bashir

I watched Waltz with Bashir last night; a truly exceptional film. It sounds cliched, but is nevertheless true: I wish that I could make every policymaker and every general watch this film. It's animated; but it is nothing like any cartoon or graphic movie one has ever watched; the colours, mood and etchings in the picturization are remarkable; as is the story, the music, the narrative and the flights of fantasy. One particularly haunting image remains; that of the dead soldiers in the water, opening their eyes, coming alive, walking out of the water naked, to the shore, putting on their clothes and walking back into the town and into their lives. It is a fantastical interlude, but truly exceptional. And the last haunting truth; I won't spoil it for people who have not watched it, but exceptional. It shows the massacres happening, and more than actual footage, the cartoon feature at this point is astounding.

As for the politics of the film; I am leaving aside the politics for the pundits to argue; whether the Israeli Defense Forces were accurately portrayed, whether it lets the Christian Phalangists off too easy, or the Palestinians; honestly it doesn't matter who the fuck is right, when all these people have died.

limitation

"Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of god."

At the beginning of the year this year, as the clock tipped into a new decade, I thought about the 300,000 or so refugees that were still languishing in camps in Sri Lanka. What did they do wrong? Why were their lives like that and my life so different? Would things ever change for them? Or would they always live in an unchanging matrix of repression, poverty and pain? Even amidst that squalor, was it still possible to find joy in life? Through children, parents, lovers and friends? And what of the thousand other injuries and indignities that become normalized in those camps?

I think that until one loses someone, to death, like that; a parent, a sibling, a child, a lover, a friend; one would never really know what loss is. And to confront that kind of permanent loss; especially if taken before their time; taken against their will, - is incomprehensible. The human mind is so limited in its scope, so fragile in its build; that to accept this kind of loss; to accommodate it, is to experience a fundamentally changed vision of the world; it will never be the same again.

So, instead of the almost trivial daily mundanities that fill up our lives; I wish that we, that I, could concentrate on what truly matters; and shed the faded skin of what actually makes up daily life.