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Feb 06, 2009 09:29



You need to go see this.

I have an extremely low threshold for violence, and this is a graphically violent movie. But this was also the most important movie I've seen in ages. It's easy to get caught up in abstract sociopolitical theory when you read about all the fucked-up shit happening with Israel and Palestine right now, but it's hard to get a sense of how war-as-a-way-of-life for generations has impacted the people of Israel (and the middle east, for that matter) and how that, in effect, has so tightly integrated into Israeli identity and culture.

The animation is superb and hits a wonderful tone. It's less distracting than the Richard Linklater shifty style - almost like Linklater-meets-South-Park paper cut-out style. Movement is subtle, intentional and minimalistic, which lends a spooky and unique abstract/reality quality to the movie. The movie script and execution is almost documentary-style, but being animated brings a dreamlike, in-memory quality to it that interestingly feels more effective than real footage. There is real footage at the end, too. The transition is seamless, but the juxtaposition is startling. After all, we're so desensitized to seeing horrible images of rubble and people in mourning on the news. Watching it happen through animation - a format which is by its very nature deliberate, painstaking, slow, intentional and precise - refocuses our attention to where it matters, past the jaded cynicism and skepticism of the modern news media and back to the people, who are the ones killing and being killed.

As a social experiment, I would be very curious to see how neocons and kneejerk Republicans reacted to a movie like this.

movies, media

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