Waltz with Bashir

Israeli director Ari Folman tells a personal tale about the first Lebanon War in 1982. It's basically a documentary but in animated form.

Folman meets a friend in a bar who recounts a reoccurring nightmare he has where he is chased by 26 ferocious dogs. This, they conclude, is connected to his involvement in the war. Folman himself though, does not remember much about it. So, he meets up with other army colleagues, as well as a psychologist and the journalist Ron Ben-Yishai to try to jog his memory which he seems to have effectively repressed, especially concerning events leading up to the notorious Sabra and Shatila massacre. Through a series of conversations, Folman slowly reveals his past, showing the events he witnessed and was involved in, in the form of flashback.



It's an interesting history lesson, although taken from his point of view, but I found it a bit messy and bitty. It didn't really flow to any set pattern, like his memory I suppose, as we gradually build up to the massacre.



The allies of the Israelis were the Lebanese Christian Phalangists and when the Lebanese President, Bashir Gemayel, is assassinated, they are allowed to go into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to hunt for terrorists. Instead, they killed at least 800 Palestinian civilians in revenge, including women and children, whilst the Israelis stood by and watched. The army even fired flares into the night sky to provide lighting for the Phalangist's mission. At the end of the film, real footage of the discovery of the massacre is shown, presenting graphic pictures of the corpses.

I think being animated, and there was no doubt that the animation was magnificent, it was hard to identify with Folman and there was no character building to help you with this. I didn't feel I knew Ari Folman at all, so although I cared about what happened generally, I didn't particularly care about his own involvement.



Why did they use animation? Probably simply because they could be more controversial than they could have been on film.

Still it was a thought-provoking comment on the war, the dreadful massacre and the soldiers, who came across as a confused, scared and ill prepared bunch. In that sense, it got its message across. It was a decent, powerful piece of art but as a film, for me, it didn't really cut it.

Baader Meinhof Komplex

A group of West German students are demonstrating against the Shah of Iran, who is visiting the country. They are also protesting against their own government, who they accuse of being a puppet in the hands of imperialist America. Then aided and abetted by the police, supporters of the Shah pick a fight with the students. Together they senselessly beat the demonstrators to a pulp. The police threaten a protester with a gun to his head, it goes off, although possibly by accident but a martyr is born.

On this violent note the film starts and it doesn't get any less horrific from there onwards. Some of the protesters have no time for peaceful objections, they want revolution now. They form the Red Army Faction (RAF), whose aims are to turn things around by stronger means.

Among these are journalist Ulrike Meinhof, known for writing biting critiques against the government, and part-time criminal Andreas Baader, because of their involvement the RAF became known as the Baader-Meinhof group. The film focuses primarily on these two and Baader's girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, a unwavering fanatic if ever there was one.

At first, the group content themselves with committing bank robberies for the cause and gain some sympathetic support from normal Germans but soon they turned to killing people.

What follows in the film is a detailed history of the actions of the RAF and their battles with the German establishment, as the film attempts to squeeze 10 years of history into two and a half hours. The sheer magnitude of the events makes this difficult, so the movie travels through history at breakneck pace without taking time to delve into any particular aspect at any length or to attempt to decipher the thoughts of those behind the RAF. Not that many of them seemed to have much idea of what they wanted to achieve anyway.



It may not be hot on detail but the film does at times have you clinging to the edge of your seat as it captures the essence of the tensions that existed at the time. Kidnaps, executions and explosions come fast and furious as plans are hatched and then usually messed up. It's still a fascinating story and I remember many of the events happening at the time.

When they are not killing or blowing things up, the group spend a lot of their time naked or with a cigarette in their mouths. Both seem to be compulsory if you're in the RAF.



Eventually the authorities catch up with them and the ringleaders are dumped in prison. Not happy with the conditions they are in, they go on collective hunger strike and after the death of one of them, Holger Meins, they are all reunited in Stuttgart's Stammheim prison where their trial would eventually take place.

Collectively their mental state starts to crumble and Meinhof falls out with the others as plans to get them released continually fail. She doesn't make it to the end of the trial and hung herself in her cell. Although it was claimed by the RAF that she was murdered by the authorities. After a long and expensive trial, the remaining defendants, primarily Baader, Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Outside of Stammheim, the violence continued, driven by a new generation of fighters in a campaign in support of their jailed comrades, still trying to secure their release. Their motivations remain a mystery, you think perhaps some of the group just joined because they fancied a bit of bloodshed. In a final throw of the dice, the RAF kidnapped Hanns Schleyer, the chairman of the German Employers' Organisation, and a group of Palestinian's hijacked a Lufthansa Flight on behalf of the RAF.



It was all in vain, the German government had no intention of ever releasing them. The terrorists saw the writing on the wall and inside Stammheim, they agreed to a suicide pact. The next morning, they were all found dead in their cells. None of this saved Schleyer, who was later executed in the woods.

After the pace of the film, the end credits seem to come upon you a bit abruptly.

It's an excellent and well acted film that neither approves nor disapproves of it's subject matter. Today, many people are still objecting to much the same things, just less violently, re: the Bush administration, Iraq, Afghanistan, capitalism in general. Horst Herold, the director of the German Police said that he could only cure the symptoms of the RAF disease but not the disease itself. In part admitting that the RAF were not altogether wrong in their thoughts, just badly wrong in their actions.

Mýrin (Jar City)

Jar City is based on a novel by Iceland's most successful crime writer, Arnaldur Indriðason. Not that I've heard of him. I also don't know any Icelandic actors and I'm not sure how many the country has, so we've probably witnessed all of them in one go.

The story begins with the discovery of a body in an apartment and separately, a genetic researcher called Örn burying his four-year-old daughter who has died from a rare illness. Experienced detective Erlandur investigates and the trail takes him back 30 years when there were allegations of rape, police corruption, an unsolved disappearance and the death of another young girl from the same rare illness.



Erlandur also has his hands full with his own drug-addicted daughter who is constantly trying to get money off him and has now gotten herself pregnant.



In the end, the mystery is untangled and everything ties together, along the way, we are treated to some dour Icelandic characters and dodgy criminals, some of which are on the police payroll.

I wasn't expecting much but I quite liked it and it sustained my interest all the way through. An intriguing film, which managed to go back thirty years without any flashbacks. Then just to catch me out, it flashed back a couple of times to the later day murder. It was particularly confusing because two of the lead characters looked a bit similar.

Jar City is an excellent thriller, although a bit like a TV police series, Colombo meets CSI, that sort of thing. The difference was, it was cliché and unnecessary swearing free, which obviously it wouldn't have been had it been made in America, unless of course they just omitted them from the subtitles. Then of course, they had the advantage of the outstanding location. We were treated to some great shots of the bleak terrain, although there wasn't enough snow.



The pièce de résistance was the gruesome scene of Erlandur pulling up at the fast food drive-in, ordering his takeaway meal and then taking his sheep's head home, where he eats it with his penknife, starting with the eyeball of course. Welcome to Iceland.