The Greatest Trick

Waltz with Bashir was on my to-see list late last year, but it only recently arrived at my local arts cinema, hence the lateness of this review. Anyway, it’s an extraordinarily bold, shocking and visually stunning animated documentary and further evidence that animation is not always for children. Rather amusingly, Ratatouille/The Incredibles director Brad Bird once threatened to punch the next person he met who referred to animation as a genre. It is merely a technique, and one that is employed here to phenomenally innovative effect.

Based on a true story, the film is about writer/director Ariel Forman, who fought in the Israeli/Lebanon war of 1982, but has no memory of it. Throughout the story he attempts to piece together fragments of his repressed memories by interviewing those who fought alongside him, and gradually it becomes clear that he was present at a terrible massacre which so traumatised him that he was unable to remember it.

The extraordinary animation is used to riveting, brilliant effect. Whether depicting a rain swept Tel Aviv, hallucinatory visions and dreams, fierce battles, or the stunning opening where a pack of snarling dogs charge towards the camera, it really is impossible to find a film to compare this to. On a purely visual level alone, Waltz with Bashir is a mesmerising triumph with a level of detail that really needs to be seen on a big screen to be appreciated.

It’s worth making clear that Waltz with Bashir is not a political film. There have been some misguided attempts to nail it down as both pro and anti Israeli when it is neither. This is not an attempt to whitewash the Israeli Defence Force, nor condemn them outright. Critics have said Ariel Forman failed to contextualise the Israeli/Lebanon war by explaining its origins, and as someone sympathetic to Israel who gets continually frustrated with the general level of ignorance about these events, I can understand – to a degree – this point of view. Waltz with Bashir does not detail the years of violent attacks against Christians by the PLO (they had migrated to Lebanon after King Hussein kicked them out of Jordan in the early 70s), nor does it speak of the thousands of Lebanese Christians who were forced to flee as a result of that and Syria’s involvement.

However, with this context or not, such events do not in any way justify the appalling war crimes perpetuated by the Christian Phalangist militia who killed around 800 civilians or more at Palestinian camps. It is right and proper, in my opinion, both to bring these events to light, and (in the case of the IDF) to demonstrate that standing by and allowing such atrocities is a great sin of omission. An interesting historical footnote is that Arik Sharon, who in the film is shown to have had the power to intervene and stop the atrocities, was eventually found personally responsible for not stopping it by an Israeli commission investigating the massacre.

However, as previously stated, this film is not about politics or borders but morality. Yes, it’s about the appalling damage war inflicts on those who fight in them, psychologically as well as physically, but it is even more than that. It is, above all, a profound meditation on personal responsibility and a clear demonstration that regardless of the rights or wrongs of a military cause, murder is always murder. To call oneself Christian, then shoot unarmed women and children and carve bloody crosses on their chests, is about as far from true Christianity as it is possible to get.

This astonishing animated documentary is a genuinely unique piece of cinema that offers no easy answers and really forces its audience to think. There never has been, nor, I suspect, will there ever be a film quite like it. It is therefore a great shame to have to report that in spite of the undeniable technical and artistic brilliance, there is one moment that really ought to give Christians pause as to whether or not they see this. In said sequence, an Israeli commander is watching a pornographic film which although animated and played for laughs, is nevertheless unjustified, gratuitous and leaves nothing to the imagination. There is nudity elsewhere in the film, but in a non-sexual context and unlike the afore-mentioned scene it did not seem gratuitous. Obviously there is also violence, much of it shocking, but in this post Saving Private Ryan era, the level of blood and gore actually seemed comparatively restrained.

In final analysis, on a purely artistic level, this is an absolutely outstanding achievement. However, in light of the scene mentioned above, most if not all Christian audiences really ought to avoid this, or at least exercise extreme caution if viewing. This is a great shame, as it spoils an otherwise extraordinary film.

High School Musical - (3 stars) this is an absolute phenomenon with the kids, and I was desperate to find out why I was teaching teenagers who knew all the lyrics and dances inside and out. The answer is - Disney knows its market! A light tale about two misfits (pretty ones, of course) coming together through singing and dancing, and bringing everyone along with them through, you know, “being themselves” (what else in a Disney movie?). It’s fun enough, with some very good musical set-pieces (’Get your head in the game’ being my favourite), and if you’re below the age of 15 (and probably more for the girls), perfect, harmless entertainment.

Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room - (3 stars) Greed, greed, greed. That’s what brought Enron down, and it’s so clear from this film. This documentary goes back over some of the key players in the Enron scandal, what they got up to and why, and is pretty interesting. There are parts that engage a lot more than others, such as listening to the recordings of Enron employees laughing at the misfortunes of the inhabitants of the West Coast of the US - absolutely repulsive, and a very effective piece of documentary film-making. Less manipulative than Michael Moore, and possibly for that reason less consistently engaging.

An Inconvenient Truth - (4 stars) Al Gore shows you his power-point presentation on the environment and climate change and forces you to think and act. As a family we are already quite enthusiastic about living ethically, doing our bit to look after the world that God made and so on, and this film just confirms that everyone needs to be doing this! The bit that kids at school apparently responded to was polar bears drowning in their own local environment due to melting ice caps; there are so many shocking facts, stats and images here that it seems unlikely that one could watch this movie and not try to do more for the environment. It’s not a perfect film - some of the inserts about Gore himself add very little - but it’s the most accessible education on global warming that you could get in under 2 hours. Oh, and the major worry about Gore creating a massive carbon footprint by going round the world showing his presentation is answered in the trivia section here.

The Wolf Man - (3 stars) Universal horror, detailing the werewolf myth, linking it to gypsy curses and including all the well-known moon-related tales. Lon Chaney plays the man under the make-up, which is brilliant, and the lighting and mood of the piece is suitably dark, but the film-making style always detracts from actual scariness in these films.

Right At Your Door - (3 stars) A dirty bomb is released in LA. Man gets home just in time, wife arrives back some time later to find herself locked out by him as the radio has advised everybody to keep doors and windows shut and not let anyone in or out. A tense period follows as both parties try to work out what to do and how they might get help in a terror situation. A good premise for a movie, with a nice thorny moral question at the centre, but the movie slows considerably in the middle and doesn’t quite have the courage of its convictions. A fair amount of swearing.

In this day and age most of us are not used to black and white. Some of us are not used to watching films in another language, or documentaries in the cinema. There are almost none who are used to seeing bare-faced propaganda, and this film is a combination of all four, which was clearly designed to impress the German cinema-going public of 1935. And while jarring and disturbing to watch what would become one of the most evil regimes of the 20th Century promote itself so openly, I must confess to falling slightly asleep at certain points…

Hitler appointed director Leni Riefenstahl (personally, apparently) to document the Nazi party rally of 1934, so it is unsurprising that the film has a distinct political bent. What you get to see goes as follows: ranks and ranks of the amassed, newly-fortified German army, displaying both numerical and technological readiness for the years ahead (of course, watching this in hindsight must be a very different experience to how the original viewers saw it); speeches from the Nazi top brass - Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess and several you won’t have heard of unless you’re a historian all get their time in the limelight; endless shots of marching and motorcades (the afore-mentioned napping opportunities); Hitler, specifically, being treated like a superstar by all and sundry (which, of course, he was - viewers must remember that this was the man who had been vital in the re-building of Germany, and that the people he was leading had no reason at this point to suspect him of tendencies towards dictatorship - he had only been Chancellor a year in 1934) - you start to think “if only they knew” over and over again; swastikas hung liberally over every possible building; and most troubling, the Hitler Youth being instructed in the ways of the party and intoning a kind of call-and-response liturgy detailing their unwavering loyalty to country and Fuhrer.

Most reviewers give the film very high ratings, because it is done beautifully - hence its power and terrifying nature. But among the glorious overhead shots and sweeping vistas of the German army in all its glory, there were moments of boredom for me. The IMDb review says that the film defies a star rating; I can agree with this, but not for quite the same reason - what you are watching is history playing itself out, and yes, it’s been shot and edited in a certain way to make the audience feel or think a certain thing, but nothing here is fake. And if nothing else, the film is important because if we ever see a regime displaying this kind of self-promotion again, we know to be extremely mistrustful. From a Christian point of view, there are none of the usual things that would upset viewers (sex, violence, language) - but don’t expect to watch this film and not be disturbed by it to some extent.

A short review tonight, not because the film doesn’t deserve it, but because it’s late. Touching the Void tells the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two (frankly, insane) climbers who, in 1985, attempted to scale the perilous slopes of Siula Grande in Peru. This was a mountain deemed unclimbable by the majority of the climbing community, and the pair of friends wanted to prove them wrong. Of course, they managed to climb it, but on coming down faced a barrage of obstacles, the main one being Joe’s leg breaking and Simon having to lower him down the mountain on a rope. Not all that easy, by the looks of things.

I won’t say any more because the major moral dilemma of the piece comes fairly early on, but it is clear from the start that both of them survived their ordeal, because they are doing talking heads interviews throughout the movie, giving their memories (when they can) and discussing their decisions. It’s a strange film, half documentary and half re-enactment, but never with enough focus on the characters as they are played by actors to engage with that part. And Simon and Joe are so British about their descriptions that they never fully engaged me either. Lines like “It really was very very cold” (not much of a surprise there, frankly) actually end up being terribly weak compared to what we can see on screen - perhaps it would have been better to make a straight documentary, or ‘based on’ film. And what we do see on screen of the re-enactment is amazingly done - I couldn’t help wondering how on earth they filmed it without going to a crevasse. How do you get a camera crew inside holes like that?

There are 2 major scenes of swearing, of the most offensive kind (but quite forgiveable in the context, and directed at nothing and nobody but the swearers themselves), just to be aware of. The film didn’t totally work for me, but the very fact that they shot it is testament to the skills of the film-makers, and some of the scenery is astonishing.

Well, this strictly isn’t a film but a recording of a one-man stage show, but in honour of us re-instating our subscription to lovefilm.com, we felt it appropriate to review the first thing we watched. For those of you who don’t know, Dave Gorman began in stand-up but has been pursuing ‘documentary comedy’ for some years now. Author of the book and show ‘Are you Dave Gorman?’, where he spends the best part of his life looking for people with the same name as him, and friend to Danny Wallace, who you may have seen on TV recently starting his own country, the man is funny and erudite and has a knack for finding himself in odd situations. The Googlewhack Adventure demonstrates this admirably.

A Googlewhack, again in case you weren’t sure, is when you type 2 random words into Google, hit search and have just one page come back as your result. Those of you who know what it is have surely tried it, those who don’t will probably go and do so now. Go on, I’ll wait for you.

Ready? Done it? Not alwasy easy, is it? Anyway, bitten by the Googlewhack bug by a chance encounter with an Australian online stranger who discovers that Dave’s site contains one, Gorman sets off on an unwilling quest. He explains in some detail how now he was 31 he couldn’t possibly respond to a stupid bet to find 10 googlewhacks in a row and meet them all by his 32nd birthday. He brings a lot of detail to his tale of MASSIVE coincidences which start the whole thing off, and drunken events that conspire to get him to Washington DC on New Year’s Day 2003. And under duress, he begins to meet his googlewhacks in Boston and Columbus and Austin and London and Wales and San Diego etc etc. By the time he has come to terms with the fact that he is spending all the money advanced to him for a novel, he is so entrenched in the quest that it has taken over his life.

The presentation of the show is simple and highly effective. Gorman stands in front of a big screen with a remote for his computer and projects images which help him tell his story. And he tells his story with warmth, wit and a style that draws you in straight away. It’s just a guy recounting a fascinating anecdote of a few months of his life, in front of loads of people. The one thing that detracted for us was the use of more swearing than is strictly necessary, but in a live show that is often the case. The fact is, the man can tell a story well, and the circumstances have to be heard to be believed. There are many points in the show where you can feel the audience’s tension, and I think that’s quite impressive. Recordings of plays / shows are notoriously badly-done in my opinion, or simply unsatisfactory as a viewing experience. Due to its simplicity, this one is not.

Having said that, very simply, we preferred the book. Isn’t it always the way? It has more detail about certain encounters (such as the Welsh mini-drivers club and the alternative music scene adored by one American googlewhack) which are just as funny to read about as the rest, and with less swearing. And taking longer than 2 hours to read it made you feel like this was consuming his life more than it did as a whistle-stop stage show, even though the running time of the show was healthy - you get plenty for your money! If documentary comedy is your thing, and it has been for Heidi & I on and off over the past few years, check this out. Or buy the book.

Michael Moore is a curious chap. In the past few years, Heidi and I have watched all his films as director available in the UK (Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine and now Fahrenheit 9/11), and have read a couple of his books, most notably Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s my Country?. While there are certain views of his that we absolutely do not share (say, on abortion), he makes for very entertaining reading and documentary film-making, and provokes you to consider the issues that get bandied around in a little more detail (like, was the Iraq war all about oil? According to this film, it would seem that way). But at the same time, he is a shameless manipulator of facts and events and sound and pictures to make you feel what he wants you to feel, especially in his films, and I know that this frustrates a lot of people (while of course every film-maker does this, it feels less acceptable in a documentary than in a fiction). There is a clear example of this to British viewers - he presents a list of the silly little countries who ally with Bush over the Iraq war, but leaves the UK out totally, just to make his point.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (the title of it annoys me, by the way. You should say ‘nine-one-one’, so as to recognise the steal from the title of Fahrenheit 451 - ‘four-five-one’ - , but everyone says ‘nine-eleven’) is no exception to this. Moore’s chosen focus this time is George W Bush: his history, his business dealings, his agendas, his administration, his wars, his miraculous ability to win states in elections, his father’s influence and, of course, his stupidity. In some parts of the film, it feels like Moore has just become obssessed with personally attacking this man (e.g. the moment when Bush is told about the World Trade Centre attacks, he is sat in a primary classroom with a load of children, thinking about what to do and trying to process the information. He looks troubled and a bit blank, which I think I would look like in that situation, but Moore lambasts him for not getting up and doing something for ten minutes, and speculates wildly about what could be going through the President’s mind). In others he presents facts which shock fairly and reasonably: did you know that when all planes were grounded straight after the 9/11 attacks, special dispensation was made to fly members of the Bin Laden family out of America, so they wouldn’t come under attack? And still other sections have a narration track that makes Moore’s commentary feel like borderline racism (when talking about the Bush family’s relationship with Saudi Arabia).

Moore’s style of confrontational film-making is still present (when he finds out that only one member of Congress has a child signed up and fighting in Iraq, he accosts more of them on Capitol Hill to see if he can persuade them to sign their children up to help the war effort. Unsuprisingly, they are reluctant.), and this continues to entertain, but the film seemed less focussed than his previous work, especially Bowling for Columbine, which was excellent. He also reveals his own limited scope by going back to his home town of Flint (see Roger & Me for more on this place), and not really spending any time considering the implications of Bush as a world leader, just his effect on the American people.

Not a bad film overall, but not as sharp as previous offerings. There are some graphic images of death and war, and some sudden swearing which takes you a bit by surprise! See Bowling for Columbine for the best example of Michael Moore’s work.

Supersize me!: a documentary feature looking at the effects of the fast food industry on America in general, and specifically, one person’s health. Morgan Spurlock, director, takes it upon himself to eat nothing but McDonald’s food for a month (morning, noon and night) and check the effects on his body. Alongside this, he looks at various aspects of the fast food industry, for example the way they advertise, appeal to kids and worm their way into schools. In fact, one of the most amazing sections was when he showed pictures of several well-known faces to a group of 5-year-olds. They could all identify Ronald McDonald, but only one could say which picture was George Washington. (Most bizarrely, one picture was held up - not in view of the camera - and the child guessed ‘George W Bush?’. It was then revealed to be a picture of Jesus)

The director’s girlfriend is a vegan chef, and can barely stand to watch him do his experiment. At the start, he is in perfect shape. By the end, his doctors find that he has pickled his liver, just like an alcoholic would. He gets sick straight after his first supersize meal, then depressed as the month goes on and finally addicted to the food he is eating. Not really wishing to reveal the end, but he does survive his ordeal; however, it took him 14 months afterwards to lose the weight he had gained. In total, he put 30lb of sugar into his body over the month - 1lb per day! Think about that next time you tuck into a Big Mac (I’m sure it won’t stop me, by the way, but I certainly feel better informed).

Apparently a few weeks after the film premiered in the US, McD’s took the supersize option off their menus. They said it was nothing to do with the movie at all.

Highly recommended, with the following note of caution: there is a bit of swearing as I recall, and if you’re squeamish in any way you might find it hard to watch in places.