If I have not completed all of the classwork I should have for Thursday and Friday, I'm officially chalking it up to a more immediate cause: watching "Lebanon" at the Carlisle Theater and staying for the panel discussion with Prof.s Diamant, Weinberger, and Commons.
Honestly, I just finished blogging about it on my non-class oriented blog... or rather, posting about thoughts inspired by the experience as a whole, rather than simply the matter of the movie. Must say, in situations such as this, I find the audience just as telling and intriguing as the movie they're watching. It was the same with the showing of "Waltz with Bashir" in spring 2009 - seeing visiting Prof. Itzchak Weismann (from the University of Haifa) leave the theater in silence, waving away his concerned wife, struck home any level of reality the movie might not have quite hit on. ...This evening (well, technically, yesterday), I found myself seated beside a veteran of the very conflict being highlighted on screen, as Prof. Diamant dropped into the seat next to me.
For current purposes, though, we'll focus on the more immediate matters of the film, written and directed by Samuel Maoz and entirely set in an Israeli tank during the war in Lebanon in 1982. The very idea, frankly, is one that hadn't truly occurred to me previously: we see tanks thundering across a desert or rumbling through a field, wreaking havoc or rusting and forgotten... yet somehow, at least for me, I never really stop to think about that which is going on within it. Instead, it's an oversimplified block of destructive metal on tracks, a weapon of warfare. Sure, I certainly take into consideration the citizens and the bystanders, the casualties, the soldiers, the politicians... but I think, somewhere along the line, I vaguely overlooked that there were people inside this massive and imposing weapon - people just as vulnerable to the war as those outside the moving bringer of destruction.
The follow-up discussion, of course, considered what was realistic about the film and what was less so, the matter of morality in war, the changing nature of war - particularly in urban areas, as in Lebanon - and the universal similarities of soldiers in conflict situations. Who was the enemy (what about the citizens? recall also: the Intifada) and who was reliable (the Phalangists? ...doubtful- which they would tragically prove with Sabra and Shatilla), who is giving the orders, for how long will the conflict continue, at what price, how different is the reality of the situation from that which was planned and is reported, etc... and what deeper effect does it have on the people involved, mentally and emotionally? Of course, there are many more questions involved - and, as is often the case, surely more questions than there are answers. Certainly no simple answers.
I must, however, get back to assigned work before hitting the hay, so I'll leave you with these and note that we have "Waltz with Bashir" in the library (not so sure about "Lebanon"... and beware, we have two copies of "Waltz with Bashir," only one of which has English subtitles, apparently).... take a gander.
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