Andrew Braid

FILM 5506

April 20, 2015

FILM 5506 Final Essay: History in the Drawn Line- Animated

Cinema and the Pretty Image

In her examination for Camera Obscura, Rosalind Galt

discusses what she calls the “pretty image” and the many

stigmas and suspicions associated with such visual spectacle

in the eyes of many film theorists. Such filmmaking eschews

the desire for cinematic realism favored by theorists like

Siegfried Kracauer and Andre Bazin in favor of a more

deliberately stylized visual surface: “colorful, carefully

composed, balanced, richly textured, or ornamental” (Galt

7). Throughout film history there has been a problematic

association of the pretty image with the cosmetic (and

therefore inferior), much of it rooted in patriarchal

anxiety of seduction and infiltration by the more “pretty”

(“feminine”) aesthetic. Even before the existence of film

art discourse has tried to devalue and shun the pretty

image. Nineteenth-century French critic Charles Blanc pushed

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his concerns for active meaning over passive spectacle,

claiming how color was dangerous for painters of historical

battles: “in passionately pursuing the triumph of color, the

painter runs the risk of sacrificing the action to the

spectacle” (4). Time and again similar arguments and

criticisms have popped up throughout the history of film

theory, praising the ideals of realism while shunning the

pretty image as something artistically inferior that is

inherently lacking (or diminished) in meaning. The frequent

dismissal of the pretty in film theory tells us something

about where and how we’re willing to find meaning, and to

address these pretty qualities of the image “is to face

cinema’s anxieties about its own value” (7).

Perhaps no form of cinema better embodies the

aestheticized “pretty image” better than animation. The

animated form has been hugely popular for decades of film’s

history, yet like with many “pretty” live-action films there

have been some critics and audiences who still reject or

dismiss their potential value with iconophobic attitudes.

Animated cinema does in fact have the potential for immense

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power in influencing the viewer, perhaps even more

effectively than live action films, which might explain why

it has been a popular form for use of propaganda. It is well

known that during World War II Walt Disney Animation worked

on propaganda films for the U.S. government to boost morale

and increase support for the war. However such animated

shorts from Disney and other studies would often avoid

portraying real people or historical events (aside from the

occasional caricature of Hitler), instead relying on popular

cartoon characters like Donald Duck to engage with

exaggerated nondescript versions of the enemy. With the vast

majority of animated features made before and since there

has been a conscious line drawn to keep the medium within

its own world, to distance and separate itself from reality.

Even in recent years there has been a very small handful of

animated feature films willing to tackle and depict real

world events. However, three of these recent exceptions make

a compelling argument for the value and potential of the

pretty. These rare examples of the historical animated

feature not only find unique emotional and political power

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with audiences but also convey profound identification and

meaning because of (and not despite) their use of the pretty

image.

The final feature film from legendary writer-director

Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises (Japan, 2013) is a historical

biopic about Jiro Horikoshi, the famous aeronautical

engineer who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane

used by Japan during World War II. The film is partly

fictionalized, combining Horikoshi’s life story with a loose

adaptation of the 1937 short story The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo

Hori. The short story, centering on a woman at a

tuberculosis sanitarium struggling with her condition, is

adapted into a tragic romance between Jiro and Nahoko, a

young woman suffering from the same illness. The rest of the

film follows Jiro’s life leading up to his successful design

of the Zero plane, inspired in his dreams by the famous

Italian aircraft engineer Giovanni Caproni to build

beautiful airplanes. The film contains more than a few

trademarks from Miyazaki’s previous films, in particular his

fascination with flight and aircrafts as well as his

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steadfast belief in pacifism. Unlike Persepolis or Waltz with

Bashir, The Wind Rises became a genuine blockbuster, ranking as

the highest-grossing film of 2013 in Japan (in no doubt

bolstered by Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki’s significant pop

culture presence in their native country). In a 2011

interview Miyazaki mentions how he was compelled to make The

Wind Rises because of an alleged statement by Horikoshi, a man

whose most famous technological accomplishment was later

used by Japan in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and many other

assaults throughout World War II. His quote: “all I wanted

to do was to make something beautiful”.

The Wind Rises is much like many of Miyazaki and Studio

Ghibli’s prior features when it comes to its animation,

bright and often vibrantly colorful hand-drawn imagery with

a particularly striking emphasis on sky blues and greens.

The details and character expressions are in line with the

studio’s trademark style, adding a (literally) quite

animated quality to many scenes of tension or emotional

drama. As Jiro’s employers watch in suspense as they test

their latest aircraft, his boss Kurokawa’s hair starts

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slowly standing upright as he leans forward in anticipation.

Beads of clear blue sweat form across Jiro’s face as he

helps Nahoko’s maid walk home through the aftermath of an

earthquake. Tears in particular have a more exaggerated

quality to them, often swiftly and chaotically streaming

down a character’s face in large droplets. However, delving

into the realm of historical non-fiction (a rarity for a

director and studio often associated with alternately

whimsical and epic fantasy stories) causes the film to often

slightly subdue this trademark “pretty” aesthetic, grounding

it in the depictions of the more typical and mundane of

1920s and 30s Japan. It’s when the film shifts into Jiro’s

mind and dream sequences that the most fantastical and vivid

imagery appears onscreen, best showcasing the more elaborate

and expressive visuals that the studio is generally known

for.

Each transition between reality and dreamscape is

visually distinct in its own way yet always made seamless, a

reflection of Jiro’s perspective- the pretty image and

aesthetic beauty of dreams is how he regularly chooses to

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see the world. Before he first meets Caproni in his dreams

as a boy, Jiro is staring up at the sky at the night stars,

panning up to reveal a fleet of World War I-era Italian

fighter planes above as the sky goes from dark and starry to

bright and clear. The next shot closes in on Jiro, the

silent flight of the Italian aircrafts reflected against his

young awe-inspired face, before then cutting to Jiro in a

bright grassy field seeing the same planes up-close. The

second major dream with Caproni occurs in the middle of the

film, with an adult Jiro on a train leaving Germany looking

out the window, discouraged and concerned that Japan has

fallen behind and will never be able to create planes on the

scale of the Germans. He sees Caproni reflected in the

window as he takes the seat next to him, telling Jiro he’s

retiring and urging him to follow as he leaps off the train

for one last flight. As Jiro jumps out and tumbles along the

ground the smoky winter night and snow-covered field fades

into the familiar summer’s day dreamscape, opening his eyes

to a lush green field with flowers. As Caproni invites him

to join his party, gaggles of hands reach out towards Jiro

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to pull him up into a plane stuffed so full with people that

the floors near the windows bulge out and threaten to break.

As the dream ends the shot begins with the two men looking

onward high in the bright skies, panning downwards to

transition back to the gray city streets of reality below

them. The final major dream sequence comes at the very end

of the film, years after Jiro completes the Zero. The war

has resulted in millions of lives lost worldwide,

catastrophic damage to Japan and not a single one of Jiro’s

“beautiful airplanes” returning home. As the skies are

swallowed by smoke and fire Jiro sees Caproni again, having

walked through a massive graveyard of blackened plane

wreckage. As Jiro gets closer to the hill with Caproni the

field gradually transitions from debris to the lush green

grass of his dreamscapes, signifying the long trek through

the reality of what his pursuits have wrought. This is what

Jiro’s beautiful dreams were always cursed to become, just

like all selfish pursuits of art and perfection are: to be

perverted once they become part of reality.

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Right from the film’s opening scene this theme is

established: the story opens on a childhood dream of flight,

a pure and innocent fantasy of a young Jiro piloting a plane

despite the poor eyesight that will keep him grounded

throughout the rest of his real life. This dream is soon

disrupted by the appearance of a WWI German zeppelin,

adorned in blinking lights and taking on an appearance akin

to an alien craft. Hanging below the zeppelin are shadowy,

almost demonic figures with red eyes sitting atop pulsating

black bombs. It’s the reality of war from a child’s

perspective, faceless and indistinct beings of violence

shattering Jiro’s plane along with his innocent dreams of

flight as he helplessly plummets downward. Each dream

sequence features brief glimpses of war and destruction,

hints of the harsh and brutal reality that threaten to

corrupt the bright, optimistic dreamscape. In his first

dream with Caproni young Jiro witnesses faceless Italian

soldiers fly off to battle in World War I, and Caproni tells

him that most of them will never return. This is followed by

a glimpse of a blackened burning city, the planes silently

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crashing into the chaos. Jiro reacts with a brief look of

horror as an all-consuming inferno is reflected in his

glasses: he is seeing for the first time how such beautiful

art can be corrupted. “But soon the war will be over”, he

tells Jiro, and just like that it is brushed aside and

forgotten in favor of Caproni showing what he will build

afterwards (of his new plane: “instead of bombs, she’ll

carry passengers”). The intent of the film becomes clearest

at its midpoint, as Caproni poses Jiro the question of

whether he would choose to live in a world with pyramids or

without them. It’s an apt metaphor for what is essentially a

double-edged sword, building breathtaking innovations and

wonders of the world at the great cost of human suffering

and death. This leads to a profound moment where he

succinctly tells Jiro the truth about what he’s pursuing:

“airplanes are beautiful cursed dreams, waiting for the sky

to swallow them up”. Whereas Caproni has come to terms with

how his dreams will inevitably be perverted by others for

war and self-destruction (“still, I choose a world with

pyramids”), Jiro is still unsure when Caproni asks him which

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world he would choose, telling him that he “just wants to

make beautiful airplanes”. The dream sequences, and by

extension the pretty image used to create them, represent

Jiro’s denial, his perhaps willful ignorance of the

consequences that may lie down the path he takes. He

continuously chooses to pursue his art despite

subconsciously knowing that it may be perverted for the

purposes of violence, all stemming from his simple childlike

desire to fly witnessed in the film’s opening scene.

Despite being a huge financial success in Japan and

receiving a wide range of acclaim, The Wind Rises has proven

somewhat controversial with Japanese political groups and

sparked several critical debates and conversations regarding

its intent and moralism. Both pro-war nationalists and anti-

war advocates have attacked the film in Japan, with

arguments on both sides regarding whether it condemns or

sanitizes the country’s role in World War II. This debate

has only been further fueled by Miyazaki’s own politics and

his outspoken public status in the country. Miyazaki has

been known for years as one of Japan’s most prominent

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figures to speak out against the country’s imperialist past,

being branded a “traitor” by nationalists after he wrote a

scathing essay critiquing right wing Prime Minister Shinzo

Abe’s proposed revisions to Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Jiro’s emotional journey through the film has been

interpreted by many as a metaphor for Miyazaki’s own life

and career: Miyazaki is “a pacifist whose father earned his

income during the war working for a fighter plane parts

manufacturer, and a committed artist who also tried to

appreciate the realities of life, including a family he

feels he often neglected” (Byford).

Some aspects of The Wind Rises seem intended to speak

directly to Japan’s more recent history: “the film’s

inclusion of a 1923 earthquake decimating Tokyo and the

Great Depression make for pointed parallels with 2011’s

earthquake and tsunami, as well as the country’s lingering

economic stagnation“ (Rizov). Moreover the film uses such

parallels to covertly criticize Japan’s modern nationalist

views and their willingness to forget their own history

(this is still evident today- modern Japanese school

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textbooks omit or downplay many of the country’s wartime

atrocities). The more furtive nature of this criticism has

proven problematic with some reviewers: even outside of the

dream sequences the violence, struggles and hardships that

surround Jiro’s life are deliberately kept to the sidelines,

only fleetingly crossing his path. Yet those moments prove

both subtly impactful and chillingly foreboding, constantly

foreshadowing the eventual fate of Jiro’s artistic pursuits.

During his time in Germany he sees the country’s fascist

secret police chasing down one of their suspects, shadows of

the ensuing brawl and chaos projected on the brick walls.

Jiro’s friend and fellow engineer Honjo is frequently

posited as his more cynical realist counterpoint, frequently

criticizing the backwards state of Japan and speculating

years ahead of the war who Germany plans to attack with

their new airships. Honjo is often annoyed by Jiro’s

frequent optimism, wryly mocking him for being “stuck in his

happy dreams” and in frustration telling him how he “cannot

stay stuck in the past” (he later shows sympathy for Jiro

near the film’s end when he laments how “we’re not arms

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merchants, we just want to make good aircraft”). The most

telling moment of historical foreshadowing comes during

Jiro’s vacation in Karuizawa where he meets Castorp, a

fellow visitor critical of the Nazi regime. Making sure

their conversation is private he tells Jiro how the Nazis

“are a bunch of hoodlums” and how he believes war will be

inevitable and that “Japan will blow up” along with Germany

if they continue down this path. The most notable part of

this scene is Castorp’s metaphor for the “magic mountain” at

their vacation resort as a good place to forget: “quit the

league of nations, then forget it, make the world your

enemy, then forget it”. This moment pointedly holds a mirror

to modern Japanese society, pleading the nation not to

forget its history. Yet presented through the pretty image

it seems almost resigned to fate, knowing that many like

Jiro, will not heed this warning, bound to keep pushing

forward on their path and “forget it”. The use of the pretty

image that has become a point of contention with some

critics is actually intended as part of Miyazaki’s anti-war

message. Underneath the aesthetic beauty of the film’s

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animated imagery lurks the true struggles and oppressions of

the era, challenging parts of history that Jiro tries to

push past by pursuing his dreams. The ending of the film

ultimately forces Jiro (and by extension the audience) to

confront this history and face the atrocities that have come

about because of his single-minded pursuits.

Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud,

Persepolis (France/Iran/U.S., 2007) is a film adaptation of

Satrapi’s widely acclaimed graphic novel, recounting her

experiences growing up during the Iranian Revolution.

Beginning with Marjane as a young child, she witnesses the

country be overtaken by Islamic fundamentalists following

the uprising against the Shah in 1979. As she grows more

rebellious in her teenage years Marjane moves to Vienna,

Austria to escape from Iran, facing discrimination,

heartbreak and homelessness before her eventual return home.

Upon her return home she combats depression and rebels

against a government that has disappointingly become more

oppressive and extremist than ever since her absence. After

her marriage falls apart and the death of one of her friends

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as the result of a police raid, she is encouraged by her

parents to leave the country permanently, moving to Paris

but promising not to forget where she came from. Satrapi has

indicated in interviews her twofold goal in creating first

the graphic novel and later the film: “she wanted to tell

her own story, as well as regenerating Iranian culture in

the western imagination that so often reduces Iran to a

nation built on extremism” (Palmer 128).

The film adaptation of Persepolis stays faithful to the

black-and-white comic book style of Satrapi’s graphic novel,

only using color during the brief framing scenes with the

adult Marjane set during the present day. The film makes

frequent use of silhouettes at several key moments,

particularly in depicting events of political unrest and

violence that occur in the background of Marjane’s life in

Tehran. Early in the film a very young Marjane “talks

politics” with her grandmother, the two of them shown in

silhouette as Marjane lists the rules that everyone under

her proposed government must follow (such as “everyone must

keep their word”). While they talk Marjane’s mother Tadji is

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laboring in the kitchen: she never takes part in the

conversation nor is her face shown onscreen, yet the film

makes a subtle point of Marjane remembering her presence,

emphasizing amongst other moments in Persepolis the impact of

these maternal figures in Marjane’s life and the distinctly

political role of motherhood in the film. The close-up shot

of Tadji’s hands as she prepares food shows how Marjane “can

call up her image across temporal and spatial distance”,

choosing to do so rather than embracing “the psychic erasure

of the mother in the process of self-actualization” (126).

This conversation between Marjane and her grandmother

is a cute, humorous scene of childhood innocence and stable

domestic life that starkly contrasts with the following

imagery of protesters pitted against gas mask-wearing

soldiers that’s implied to be occurring right outside her

family’s window. The scene is draped in shadows and clouds

of smoke, the gas masks of the soldiers amplifying their

silhouettes with an intimidating sense of anonymity. The

scene ends with a lone protester being shot, a puddle of

blood slowly bleeding onto the ground from his limp

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silhouette as his fellow demonstrators lift up his body.

This image is recalled again later in the film when Marjane

leaves home for Austria, her parents fearing for her safety

after her rebellious nature and rebuttals about the

oppressive government start getting her in trouble at

school. As she moves through the airport terminal she looks

back to her parents one last time, witnessing her mother

collapse in heartbreak and anguish. She is then presented as

a silhouette as her father lifts her up and carries her

home, akin to the earlier image with the demonstrators.

Through this Satrapi “connects Marji’s mother – the primary

actor in her story of self-production – to a primary actor

in a political protest that contributes to the remaking of

Iranian society, complicating Tadji’s reluctant relegation

to an immobilized domestic space” (128).

The film’s depiction of Iran goes hand-in-hand with the

black-and-white style, bringing universality to Marjane’s

story of the country’s spiral into chaos and oppression.

Satrapi has explained in interviews how her intent with the

black-and-white cinematography was to show how any country

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could become like Iran, how easy it is for religious

fundamentalism, political oppression and cultural repression

to overtake a nation. Thus the presentation is meant to

convey to non-Iranian audiences the image not of foreign

people in a foreign country, but simply people in a country

that could be no different from their own. It is the details

within the illustrated hand-drawn style that help lend

Satrapi’s story this degree of universality, particularly in

early scenes of Marjane as a child. Her home life

surroundings are Iranian yet still largely familiar to

Western audiences: her living room features couches and a TV

instead of traditional Iranian pillows and rugs, and conveys

the childlike allure of large supermarkets rather than more

clichéd images of bazaars. This especially extends to

Marjane herself, namely through her obsessions with 1980s

American pop culture from Michael Jackson to punk rock.

Through their presentation as non-fictional autobiography,

“these images provide non-Iranian readers with a glimpse at

both the level of Westernization achieved in the Pahlavi era

but also elements that were likely a part of their own

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childhood” (Malek 372). This encourages the audience to

“allo-identify”, reading oneself across the body or under

the skin of other selves. Using a child’s perspective both

visually and verbally “to speak about a time in Iranian

history that was so entrenched in adult situations-

revolution, war and cultural upheaval- provides a universal

appeal that is undeniably captivating” (371).

Both the film and the graphic novel have received

universal acclaim, winning numerous awards and reaching

broad audiences both intended and otherwise. Satrapi has

noted in many interviews that her intended audience when

writing Persepolis was decidedly non-Iranian, not specifically

for wider audience appeal but to dispel “Western stereotypes

and misperceptions about the Middle East she faced when she

arrived in Europe” (373). Both the book and film have been

embraced and included in curriculums by several North

American schools, acting both as history lesson and deeply

personal yet universally relatable coming-of-age narrative.

Iranian-American readers had particularly strong responses,

particularly in terms of the sense of nostalgia it invokes

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and its honesty in speaking about issues that remain taboo

in Iranian culture. Not only does it speak directly to the

experiences of Iranian exile but it has also been praised as

an aid for the second and third generations of this diaspora

in understanding their culture and heritage. The story and

its animated imagery allow these readers to allo-identify

across borders, be they real (cultural diaspora) or

imaginary (generational). There has even been an audience

for Persepolis popping up within Iran itself, despite not

being officially translated into Persian or initially sold

in bookstores. Thanks to an extensive black market and

networks between Iran and the rest of the world the book

version has found a readership in the country.

While Satrapi’s work would never be criticized for

pulling its punches, her storytelling methods do seem to

take steps in avoiding backlash amongst the Iranian

diasporic community. She presents her past without resorting

to victimization narratives: she presents her homelessness

as the result of “a banal story of love”, portrays the

revolution from a child’s perspective “free from the slander

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of differing political factions”, and shows the war “through

the eyes of her family members, friends and veterans” (376).

In particular her focus on the effects of exile (be they

depression, drug use or marital problems) are presented as

individualized personal experience, “impossible to translate

as an authoritative representation of the entire community”

(376). Despite this Persepolis still faces controversies on

fronts from both Iran and North America. The film initially

drew complaints from the Iranian government when it

premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, particularly

for its depictions of the “glorious Islamic Revolution”

(these cultural authorities later relented the following

year and allowed limited screenings in Tehran, albeit with

some scenes censored due to sexual content). Similar

sentiments from Shiite clerics initially led to a ban on the

film in Lebanon, which was later revoked after it “set off

an outcry in Lebanese intellectual and political circles,

who saw the move as outrageous” (Rafei). Even in America

Satrapi’s work still proves controversial amongst more

conservative groups, with some schools lobbying to have the

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book and film removed from school curriculums due to adult

content. Just this year the graphic novel once again ranked

in the top 10 of the American Library Association’s most

challenged books, their findings showing how many of these

challenged works like Persepolis tend to be from female or

minority perspectives.

Operating within the distinctly unique genre of an

animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir (Israel, 2008) follows

director Ari Folman as he tries to recount and piece

together his lost memories of the 1982 Lebanon War,

interviewing old friends and former soldiers from the

Israeli Defense Force who had also fought and served during

the conflict. In particular Folman is haunted by a recurring

vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre,

which he becomes obsessed with fully piecing together

through his conversations with other veterans. He eventually

remembers how he was part of the ring of soldiers

surrounding the Palestinian refugee camp where the massacre

took place, firing flares in the sky to illuminate the camp

for the perpetrators from the Lebanese Christian Phalange

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militia. The film features both actual living people and

fictional composites of real life figures as its interview

subjects, directly tackling the unresolved tension between

dream and reality and the thin and ever-blurring line

between sanity and psychosis.

In an interview sequence early in the film, Folman’s

friend Ori Sivan explains the entanglement of reality and

fantasy that networks our memory using a famous

psychological experiment. The subjects were shown 10

childhood photos, one of which was a fake pasted into a

picture of a fairground none of the subjects had visited.

Whether immediately or shortly afterwards each of the

subjects identified the photo of this fabricated experience

as real. Therefore Sivan proves that memory is dynamic and

alive- our experience of reality is formed from an

inseparable bond between events that are both factual (can

be verified) and factical (beyond verification). The scene

even emphasizes this point visually, as the same ferris

wheel and hot-air balloon from the fake photo in Sivan’s

experiment can be seen outside the window behind Folman

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during their conversation. The film’s distinct animated

visual aesthetic is rooted in this meditation on memory and

phenomenology, “as much about memory itself as it is about

the retrieval of specific memories” (Landesman 4). Thus

Waltz with Bashir “synthetically produces a rich, consistent and

thus trustworthy sense of reality for its viewers, not

despite but because of its unique aesthetic choices- its

innovative animation techniques and mixing of reality with

fantasy“ (2).

The film’s unique animation style has often been

mistaken for rotoscope (where animators trace over live-

action footage), a misconception that director of animation

Yoni Goodman has repeatedly fought against. In reality the

filmmakers designed illustrations that could later be used

for the cutouts animation process that consisted of

splitting each drawing into hundreds of pieces, each piece

moved in relation to one another to create the illusion of

movement. Compared to The Wind Rises and Persepolis, Waltz with

Bashir is without a doubt the harshest in terms of visual

aesthetic, one that uses its blur between dream and reality

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to harrowingly unearth the traumas burrowed within human

memory. Color is often used as a marker of temporality, with

filters indicating different locations (WWII imagery in

blue, the 1973 Yom Kippur War in washed-out brown, etc.)

Conversation scenes and talking head interviews obey a more

conventional documentary format, with fairly straightforward

camerawork and more realistic, muted color schemes. On the

other hand scenes that lean more factical than factual are

“characterized by an overly aestheticized, spectacle-like

quality, sketched with extremely contrasted colors, spatial

disproportions, slow movement and three-dimensional inserts”

(5). Carmi’s lucid vision on the “love boat” to the war zone

is shot through a dreamy blue filter, whereas the orange-

grey filter for the opening nightmare of demonic yellow-eyed

dogs befits the intense hallucinatory nature of post-

traumatic stress dreams. This is particularly evident in

Folman’s recurring dream of rising naked from the flare-lit

sea on the shore of Beirut. Here the color scheme becomes

the only indicator of transition from factual to factical:

“as the group of soldiers rise from the waters and navigate

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their way from the beach through the narrow streets of

Beirut, the film shifts from the orange-grey scheme that

indicates facticity to a monochromatic grey that indicates

factuality“ (5). Goodman talks about how the film was always

envisioned to be an animated feature, wanting to make their

documentary more than just “another talking heads and

archive footage movie”: “we wanted to recreate the actual

events, and to do more; to give the sense of anxiety, of

fear, to really bring out the horrors of war through

nightmares and hallucinations, and animation is really the

best, and in my opinion, the only way of telling the story

as it should be told” (McCurdy).

Of particular note is the film’s final scene, namely in

how it’s the sole sequence in the film featuring any live-

action footage. Folman’s obsession with piecing together his

memory of the massacre comes to a head as he remembers in

full detail being at his post outside the Palestinian

refugee camp following the massacre, a crowd of women

pouring out of the camps. The frame slowly zooms in on

Folman’s face, keeping him in close-up for several seconds,

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staring ahead in horror as he hears the women wailing in

anguish before cutting to the reverse shot- live-action

footage of those same women. The shock of realization that

Folman experiences “is akin to the horror of waking from a

nightmare only to find that it is real” (McCurdy), the

visual transition functioning as the ultimate act of

awakening. The length of the close-up on Folman as he

watches and hears the women’s agony “prepares the viewer

(unknowingly) for the transition to live action: given the

time to internalize Folman’s anxiety, we end up feeling it

too – even before the next (live action) shot arrives”

(Landesman 14). Whereas the rest of the film’s presentation

through the pretty image of animation represented the

blending of factual and factical in the lucid and malleable

human memory, the final moments of live action footage

present naked visible evidence of the hard truth, one that’s

impossible to deny and not so easily repressed whether it’s

consciously or otherwise.

Though Waltz with Bashir is officially banned in Lebanon

(as well as some other Arab countries), online movements

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soon rebelled against the government’s request and managed

to get the film privately screened in 2009 and seen by local

critics in the country. The film depicts a violent and

politically vague period in Lebanon’s history, one that the

country’s government is all too willing to sweep under the

rug and avoid talking about publicly. Very few major Israeli

films before or since have been produced about the conflict,

and those rare examples such as Cup Final (1991), Beaufort

(2007) and Lebanon (2009) have all been greeted with similar

varying levels of controversy. UNAM, an organization

dedicated to documenting Lebanon’s history and war memory

(and the ones who held the private screening of Waltz with

Bashir) argues that this is exactly why the film needs to be

shown in the country despite the restrictions. UNAM founder

Monika Borgmann states how the film’s subject is a crucial

moment in the nation’s history (as well as that of Israel

and the Palestinians): “at some point every state must deal

with its violent past and the sooner it does so the better”

(Anderman). The demand for the film within Lebanon since the

screening proved immense, and just as Borgmann had predicted

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in her interview the film was widely pirated via bootleg

DVDs throughout the country months later. Folman felt great

pride in his film finding an audience amongst the people it

truly spoke to the most, stating how “I don’t believe movies

can change the world, but I’m a great believer in their

ability to form small bridges” (Anderman).

The film has received tremendous praise from many

critics and viewers, yet the most fascinating reactions by

far are from veterans of the first Lebanon War who recounted

their viewing experiences. Nir Melamed, who had been through

the war when he was just 19, confessed to experiencing

strong flashbacks- to him it was not an animated film but a

completely realistic movie that he could call his own. He

refers to it as “my own movie”: “it was done from my own

point of view, made exactly according to the way I have seen

the war” (Landesman 9). Another veteran of the war, Nathan

Baruch, recounted his very strong physical reaction to the

film: “I felt a sense of belonging to the characters in the

film as if 26 years have not passed, as if the war just

happened yesterday ... I felt that I was participating in

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the film ... and then, I suddenly felt I was choking, my

heart was beating faster, I was out of air” (9). This all

raises a key question: is it really the content of these

common memories present in Waltz with Bashir that is leading to

these reactions, or is it actually the particular form of

animated mnemonic representations that is eliciting such

intense responses? In her studies on animation Joanna

Bouldin argues that a link does exist between animated and

real bodies despite their obvious lack of verisimilitude.

The animation viewers “experience a kind of ‘supplemental

materiality’ that allows them to experience their bodies in

augmented, hyper-real ways”, and it’s because of the

animated image’s lack of immediate indexicality that these

animated bodies offer viewers “amusing, exhilarating and

potentially radical embodied experiences” (11). Through its

use of the animated pretty image Waltz with Bashir asserts the

value of visual experience over visual representation, and

thus “challenges the mainstream’s subordination of the

image’s capacity to produce sensuousness and affective

resonances to its indexical fidelity” (11). This directness

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of the animated image frees the viewer from the itch to

interpret, allowing them to more openly identify with the

characters and experiences onscreen in a manner that live-

action or realist filmmaking can’t quite replicate. As a

result its aesthetic choices “help make the first Lebanon

War a collective experience that can be shared by all of the

film’s spectators – those who actually witnessed it and

those who did not” (16).

Each in their own distinct manners, The Wind Rises,

Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir use their status as animated

features to tell powerful, personal and politically sincere

stories from the darker histories of three separate nations

during the twentieth century. Each film’s use of the pretty

image in conjunction with their genre (be it biopic,

autobiography or documentary) proves to amplify their

intended meaning rather than reducing it. The spectacle of

the animated aesthetic becomes an active part of each film’s

political and personal meaning rather than just passive

spectacle for its own sake, each one to varying degrees

engaging with concepts of war, dreams and memory. Moreover

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each film’s use of the animated pretty image has proven

crucial to how they have received their own notable strong

receptions and emotional responses from audiences. They are

inseparable from their surface aesthetic, impossible to

retell or replicate outside of the animated format, standing

testaments to the value of the pretty.

Works Cited:

Anderman, Nirit. “Israeli Film on Lebanon War ‘Waltz with

Bashir’ Shown in Beirut”. Haaretz (21 January 2009).

Byford, Sam. “’The Wind Rises’: the beauty and controversy

of Miyazaki’s final film”. The Verge (23 January 2014).

Galt, Rosalind. “Pretty: Film Theory, Aesthetics and the

History of the Troublesome Image”. Camera Obscura: Feminism,

Culture and Media Studies 24.2 (2009): 1-41.

Landesman, Ohad and Roy Bendor. “Animated Recollection and

Spectatorial Experience in Waltz with Bashir”. Animation: An

Interdisciplinary Journal 6(3) (9 September 2011): 1-18.

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Malek, Amy. “Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A

Case Study of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Series”. Iranian

Studies 39.3 (3 August 2006): 353-380.

McCurdy, Kate. “Waltz with Bashir”. DG Magazine 131 (12

December 2008).

Palmer, Lindsay. “Neither Here Nor There: The Reproductive

Sphere in Transnational Feminist Cinema”. Feminist Review 99

(2011): 113-130.

Rafei, Raed. “LEBANON: Iran revolution film ‘Persepolis’

unbanned”. Los Angeles Times (28 March 2008).

Rizov, Vadim. “Controversy swirls around Miyazaki’s The Wind

Rises”. The Dissolve (14 August 2013).

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