By Kiera Wiatrak
All nine of us walked off of the airplane single file, through the narrow corridor leading into Utah. Completely absorbed in my own thoughts, I silently observed my friends who had preceded me off of the plane. In visible contrast to the strangers walking robotically yet hardly moving, my friends were busy toddling from wall to wall or staring off into space.
We were there, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, because we collectively found a comfortable niche in the independent film genre. If nothing else, the non-mainstream films provided a composite portrait of the unique-therefore-lonely mind in search of purpose and place.
In four days, I saw about a dozen films and I didn’t tire of the experience. Two of them, both with Jewish content, raised questions of emotions, morals, motivation and art.
“Did I call on you?” sarcastically asked director Noah Baumbach during a question and answer session immediately following his movie, “The Squid and the Whale,” when a patron inquired if Baumbach’s parents had viewed the film.
“The Squid and the Whale” dramatically illustrated the chaotic downfall of a Jewish marriage and the emotional trauma it inflicted on their offspring. A brilliantly written script assisted the actors’ intuitive performances and the overall successful execution of the film. Providing an intellectual character sketch, “The Squid and the Whale” was one of my favorites at the festival.
Baumbach’s answer to the personal question, asked after he admitted the film was semi-autobiographical, left the audience shaking with laughter, yet he never answered the question. I felt oddly honored at that moment to be part of a triangle of intimacy that comprised the audience, Baumbach and me.
I noticed then a process of connection and reaction had given birth to my love of film. A particular moment in a film is gripping when it stimulates a personal reaction, which rouses emotions. When we react personally to something that sprouted from someone else’s mind, we form a connection to that artist. That’s all art is, isn’t it? Just sharing an expression of something that we feel as human beings?
Film or politics
The other Jewish film I saw, a documentary entitled “Wall,” led me to challenge my beliefs and values. Directed by Simone Bitton, a Moroccan Jew who grew up in Israel, the film portrayed the negativity Israel’s separation barrier represents and the inhumane disturbances and inconveniences it has caused.
“The Arabs shoot at us so we hide behind the wall,” an Israeli child responded after Bitton asks her the barrier’s purpose.
“The fence is worthless,” reported Palestinian Abu Hani, “Without peace it’s worthless.”
An Israeli father agreed, “I don’t feel 100 percent safe here…. Two million dollars worth of fence will solve the problem? Forget it. We need negotiations.”
I eventually decided that I do advocate her message; that the separation barrier is degrading. Overall, however, I felt “Wall” was redundant and unnecessarily drawn out. It lacked in depth and failed to present the other side; that lives have been saved thanks to the barrier.
When confronted with the previous claim, she dodged the question, “Can we talk about cinema? This is a film festival,” says Bitton.
She further defended her film’s message and her personal intent, “This is my view of the tragedy going on in my land,” she said, “My only legitimacy is that I’m a filmmaker. This is my point of view and even people that don’t share it can find their place in my film.”
Bitton dissuaded her audience from believing she has sided with either the Israelis or the Palestinians: “Israeli blood has the same color for me as Palestinian blood.”
She did, however, allot a great deal of footage to one particularly cold and discourteous Israeli soldier who was patrolling.
When asked her motivations for doing so, she responded, “I wanted you to look at him and think, ‘He’s young and he has the power to say “You yes, you no.” Maybe that’s too much power given in the hands of a young guy.’”
Although Bitton stated she “didn’t interview anyone in the film, they were all encounters” with people who were merely present at the barrier, she had reportedly 45 hours of footage in total.
Seeing “Wall” and the other films led me to challenge myself. With a barrage of someone else’s values and themes thrown at me, I found myself persistently challenging my own beliefs, particularly the idealism that cinema tends to present verses the mundane practicality.
For four days, reality was altered and I swam from one life to another, one train of thought to another, one sensation to another. For four days this was my drive, to vicariously live out as many lives as I could hold my eyes open for. For four days time didn’t exist, future and past blurred and disappeared.
Kiera Wiatrak is an intern at The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
Loading ...