The uncanny and redemption
in Waltz with Bashir
Guillem Gonzlez Noguer
Contemporary Jewish Cinema through Philosophy
Professor Maciej StroiskiWaltz with Bashir is a movie with a
very sophisticated style: it is a documentary created using an
animation technique that mixes reality with fiction and one cannot
forget its self-referential and meta-fictional procedures: not only
the main character is the movie director himself, but he also shows
the process of creation. The complexity of the movies aesthetics
coincides with the large amount of subjects that it deals with: war
and Lebanon war, memory and the way it functions, psychoanalysis,
guiltiness, the art of making movies itself...In this essay, we are
going to analyze the movie through two concepts: the uncanny and
the redemption. In the first section, we will try to understand
which role uncanniness plays in the movie if any. In the second, we
will talk about the redemption. Finally, we will try to show how
the movie seems to link and even reconcile these two apparently
divorced worlds, psychoanalysis and Judaism.
1. What about the uncanny?Freuds concept of the uncanny, the
English translation of Unheimlich, is generally used to analyze
gothic or fantasy novels, and Freud summarizes its semantic
richness as follows: the uncanny is that class of the frightening
which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar (Freud).
But, as we have just described, Waltz with Bashir is not a movie
that one would call fantastic or gothic nor even frightening at
all. Then, is it really useful to use this term to analyze the
movie? Yes, it is, but one should follow Freuds deconstruction of
its meaning to find the most suitable one for our
interpretation.
Through his revision of the etymology of the Heimlich, Freud
reaches a couple of interesting conclusions. First, that the word
has some sort of ambivalent meaning: on the one hand it means what
is familiar and agreeable, and, on the other, what is concealed and
kept out of sight (Freud). Following the second definition of the
word, he also adds that it might mean that which is obscure,
inaccessible to knowledge (Ibid). Both Heimlich and Unheimlich seem
to be related to familiarity and unfamiliarity at the same time.
The second interesting thing that he finds out about the Unheimlich
is its relation with the past, precisely its origin in the
childhood: an uncanny experience occurs either when infantile
complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some
impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted
seem once more to be confirmed (Ibid).
But, now, let us come back to Waltz with Bashir: where does, in
the movie, the uncanny turn up? After the first scene (the dream),
Ali Formans conversation with his friend reveals him an
uncomfortable fact: he does not recall anything from his days in
Lebanon War. But the two scenes that follow seeing his friend
standing on beachfront, first, and then himself in a similar
position end up awaking something bigger inside Ali: he seems to
remember something, maybe a scene from the past: him and two other
young men, all of them naked, somehow wake up in the water, during
a starry night lighted up by flares, get dressed in the beach and
then walk towards the city, crowded of women in mourning. The first
uncanny situation of the movie is Ali facing that he does not
recall anything from the war, not even about Sabra and Shatila
massacre. The viewer immediately knows that something horrible
related to his war experience must have blocked his memories of
these days; Freud maybe would say that this is some kind of screen
memory. But what really adds to the situation its mysterious,
uncanny feeling is the fact that he had not noticed this void for
so many years; in other words, it is, first, uncanny because it is
obscure, inaccessible to Alis knowledge, but, second, because it
remained concealed for so long. Probably talking with Boaz
Rein-Buskila, his friend who did not dream about the dogs until two
and a half years before the conversation, and who did not tell Ali
until that moment, functioned like a mirror or a symmetrical
experience: Ali does not see Boaz and his war trauma but himself
and his suddenly appeared problem. His friend on the beachfront and
he himself on the beachfront would have the same effect: the double
repetition of a past event finally unveils a hidden (although
created) memory. This revelation starts Alis quest and it is the
real starting point for the movies action; as another of his
friends, Ori Sivan, will put it later, this vision is like a sign
from his brain to let him know that he is, at last, ready to
remember: We dont go to places where we really dont want to. A
human mechanism prevents us from entering dark places. Memory takes
us where we need to go.
The uncanny moments that neither Ali nor the viewers understand
function as calls that have to be answered or followed: Ali starts
his investigation only after them, and the viewers also experience
the same attraction because they feel connected with Ali (they know
so few things about his past as Ali does). These calls that have to
be answered could also be called, in a more psychoanalytical
language, symptoms. When he carries out his first visit to one of
his old friends, Carmi Cnaan, he manages to have his memories back
but, just like Carmi, he remembers everything except the Sabra and
Shatila massacre. So, after this second meeting, Alis goals have
been set: on one hand, he must find out what happened and which his
role on Sabra and Shatila massacre was, and, on the other hand, he
has to figure out what does his repeating dream or image has to do
with the massacre. His need to find out the truth becomes an
obsession, as Carmi puts it during his second visit; this vital
need to light up what he does not recall is the attraction power of
the uncanny, which develops some kind of anxiety inside him.But,
unlike him, the other soldiers who experienced the same do not have
this insane need to know the truth why? Only listening to somebody
who really witnessed the massacre could make the difference and
reveal the truth: this is, that his interest in the massacre
developed long before it happened, as his friend Ori says; in fact,
it was connected with his most remote past: his parents were in
Auschwitz. His relationship of guilt with the Sabra and Shatila
camps was different than the others because it was actually a
connection with his parents concentration camps; thus, the guilt he
felt was also towards his parents, so taking part in the massacre
of Palestinians would have also meant having slaughtered his
parents. Luckily, he finds out the truth: he was another witness to
the massacre, but he did not participate in it, and his dream was
just his creation (the flares that fall on Beiruts night on his
dream are probably the same ones that he fired to help the Lebanese
Phalangists carry out the Palestinian massacre; the beach on his
dream is, maybe, the same beach where him and his friend stood and
looked at the sea; and the women in mourning are the women he had
seen leaving Sabra and Shatila refugee camp). Knowing the truth
finally cancels the uncanniness effect, but this formulates another
tricky question: were him and the Israeli absolutely innocent or
how guilty they were?2. Looking for the redemptionThe verb to
redeem has different meanings in English, some of them somehow
related to the Jewish concept of redemption for example, to get
something back, to make something or someone seem less bad (or to
improve), to carry out a promise or pay back a debt (or to satisfy)
or to free people from sin (or the Christian version of
redemption). Unlike Christian redemption, Jewish redemption is
connected with the Exodus: it refers to the exile, not to sin it
involves getting something back (the Promised Land), improving a
situation (exile) and keeping a promise (both God and the Jews).
Another substantial difference is that it concerns the whole
community, not just the individual: when God gives Moses the Ten
Commandments, or when He assures the Promised Land to Abraham, the
covenants affect not only Moses or Abraham but the rest of the Jews
and their descendants. Therefore, the actions of every single
community member matter: no one will be redeemed if everybody is
not redeemed. Finally, one cannot forget that, if Christianity
considers redemption to forgive the sins, Jewish redemption demands
the avoidance of sin (this is, to follow the Ten Commandments) in
order to achieve redemption sin is not just a Christian concept: it
just plays a different role in each religion.
In Waltz with Bashir, Ali Folman carries out a journey, his own
Exodus. The Exodus idea entails escaping from captivity and seeking
its opposite: freedom, peace, calm this is precisely what Ali is
looking for. But his journey has a double nature: first, it is a
physical, geographic trip, visiting other places and meeting with
different people, and, second, it is also a mental and a moral
journey, a journey to his past and its attempt to reconstruct it
and, at the same time, to forgive himself. Having back his memories
one of the meanings of redeeming was to get something back is his
redemption: the forgotten memories and the truth are Alis Promised
Land. And, like Moses and the Jews, Ari is not alone in his
journey: on one hand, he is meeting his former comrades, and thus
he shares his trip with them, forcing them to face again their
pasts (this is, as we will see in a moment, their sins). On the
other hand, the viewer should understand Ari as a metaphorical
country of Israel; therefore, each Israeli should, through the
movie, remember his past and his countrys. Alis Journey functions
like a memory trigger, both for his comrades and the spectator.But
the unveiled truth (the past), represented with the last scenes
real life, documentary-like images (the women in mourning that
first appeared in Alis dream), is not peaceful nor redeemer at all.
As we said at the end of the previous section, having witnessed a
crime and not having intervened cannot be considered absolutely
innocent even from the Israeli soldiers standpoint, those who just
followed orders, we could say that it is some kind of a troublesome
innocence. The viewer, also confronted finally with the real
images, senses the same conflict too: can we consider Ali and his
partners, not to mention the Israeli government, absolutely
guilt-free? The answer is easy when we just consider Israeli
government, but it is difficult to decide whether to condemn or not
the soldiers. Following the Jewish Encyclopaedias entrance for sin,
there is not a single unpardonable sin but its repetition:
Repetition of the same sin may be forgiven once, twice, or even
thrice, but not a fourth time: For three transgressions of Moab [I
will forgive], and for four, I will not turn away the punishment
thereof (Amos ii, 1) . The movie can be understood, thus, as a
reminder for the Israeli community: that is what we should not do
again. If we remember some biblical examples of sins, like the
Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah or the Babel tower, we see that God
really punishes them; maybe the personal, mental problems that Ali
and other soldiers have to face after a conflict war traumas, this
is, some sort of distancing from the Promised Land can be
understood as Gods way of punishing their more or less small
sins.3. Psychoanalysis meets Judaism: the symptom and the
revelation
In the first section, we were talking about the function of the
uncanny as a sign or a symptom: we meant that Alis body sent him an
alert or a message with the instructions that he had to follow in
order to heal. At the same time, we used the word revelation not
accidentally. Franz Rosenzweig, in The Star of Redemption,
establishes the link between redemption and revelation:
The Revelation from God to man is therefore the assurance given
to the world for its Redemption, the foundation upon which rests
the certainty that the world one day will see the doubt removed and
all doubt is doubt between trust in the Creation and waiting for
the act, and the world lives from the conflict of this doubt. For
the world, Revelation is the guarantee of its entry into
eternity.This means that the revelation contains the instructions
that one (mankind, the Jewish community) has to follow in order to
achieve redemption. Ali receives his revelation in the first
scenes: he does not have memories from the war and, what is more,
this strange image from the beach has suddenly appeared in his
head; the instructions are simple: he has to remember and
understand the image. So, after he follows the instructions, the
redemption finally comes: he gets to know the truth, this is, his
past and the causes of its vanishing and the anxiety that it
produced on him. Although sometimes he is afraid of what he can
discover (he says to his friend: Isnt that dangerous? Maybe Ill
discover things I dont want to know about myself), his faith is
restored talking with his friend also a believer can doubt and lose
his faith. Therefore, we could consider God the doctor and mankind
his patient following his Law is the therapy. Obviously, the method
differs: for example, psychoanalysis has a pseudo-scientific basis
and speaking is its most important tool. Nevertheless, one needs to
believe in it if wants to get healed. Waltz with Bashir shows that
Judaism and Psychoanalysis have more contact points than just
Freuds origins: both deal with human problems and both offer a way
to solve them. All Freuds quotes belong to the online version of
his work The Uncanny, which was consulted in the following website:
HYPERLINK "http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html"
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html. From now on,
quotations with (Freud) will refer to this page.
When talking about the double and Otto Ranks ideas about it,
Freud also links the feeling of the uncanny with some kind of
return to a primitive, magical state in which the human being would
still have beliefs that science or common sense seemed to have
discredited.
The movies spectacular starting scene, in which we do not know
if we are facing a science-fiction or a horror or a fantasy movie,
nor if the dogs are just mad dogs or zombie dogs, is also uncanny.
But its true nature is soon revealed.
A screen memory denotes the fact that the consciously recalled
insignificant details of childhood often stand for emotionally
significant experiences that have undergone repression. Such
memories are almost invariably visual, and one sees oneself in them
(Akhtar, Salman. 2009. Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis,
Karnac Books, page 254). As the last scenes of the movie reveal,
this memory is not only a creation, but it is also connected with
Aris childhood and his condition of second generation Holocaust
survivor.
All the quotes without any reference will belong to the
movie.
If, before, he saw himself in Boaz (the way his brain had hidden
his memories), now he recognises himself in Carmis memory.
All the definitions belong to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online,
precisely the British one: HYPERLINK
"http://dictionary.cambridge.org"
http://dictionary.cambridge.org.
The interpretation of the movie as having a redeeming or healing
function is supported by one of the movies characters, when he asks
Ali: cant films be therapeutic?
HYPERLINK "http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13761-sin"
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13761-sin.
Franz Rosenzweig. 1921. The Star of Redemption. University of
Wisconsin Pres, 2005. We added the italics.
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