" They're standing there, howling, 26 dogs. I know what their expressions mean, killing."
For the past two years, Boaz has been haunted by the same nightmare - the sky is dim and yellow like the end of the world, and the vicious dog is hunting for his life, opening his big mouth with a towering blade, and is menacing. "26, I remember each one clearly, what they looked like, where they were shot, and their eyes when they died." Dreams are the deformation and reorganization of memory. Starting with dreams, we trace back the way we came, and find the source of memory. Everything starts from the Lebanon war 20 years ago...and the male protagonist who experienced it is the The director himself, however, could not recall the details about the war. There are only fragmentary images left, mixed with visions - I woke up naked from the sea, the sky seemed to be roaring with flames, bright as day, wearing military uniforms and walking into the streets and alleys, the crowds of weeping people were pitch black. come...
So, what the hell did I do that summer? The director started the search and recorded it with a camera. The first to find Camille, he appeared together in the director's vision. Camille was a quiet introvert, good at math and chess, and went to war to prove his masculinity. On the "Love Boat", a huge naked woman swims up, hugs him, and kisses her breasts as if she were breastfeeding. Take him to swim in the sea, like a baby attached to the mother. Camille forgot the fear of death, peaceful as home. He floated ashore in the chaos, fear came back, and he pulled the trigger against all imaginary enemies... His description of the war was also incomplete, and it seemed that something had been erased from memory. On the way back, the director recalled the days when he first entered the battlefield. In the dark night, he was driving towards a place with light, dazed, shooting mechanically, completely ignorant of the target and purpose, only knowing to obey. "What should we do?" "Shoot." "To whom?" "How do I know, shoot is the right thing to do".
The director found a fellow traveler on the first day of the war. Ronnie drove a tank around the coast, accompanied by singing, as relaxed as a vacation. In an instant, the resort turned into a Shura field, and the hunter became the prey. Impermanence is the norm in war, and in this game of Russian roulette, there is always a bullet waiting to be fired. In order to escape, he swam to the sea, the sea was quiet and comfortable, like the warmth in his mother's slightly dirty skirt. He survived alone, feeling so guilty that he didn't even dare to attend the funeral of his comrade-in-arms. The collective alienation of the individual into parts and the elimination of self-consciousness was originally the abandonment of him by the army, but it made him feel that he had abandoned the army.
Frank, who has been with the director since training camp, recounts how he shot Palestinian children armed with RPG rockets during a patrol mission. The sun is quiet, shooting into the woods to form beams of light, like spotlights on the stage. The patrol team lined up in search formation, walking on the forest path with a light pace. Accompanied by Bach's Concerto No. 5 in F minor, it's soothing and beautiful, like an afternoon sweet dream. The PLO used children to act as fighters, and Israeli soldiers shot children. This is a brutal scene, but Frank's story is full of brutal elegance and poetry.
As the interview deepened, the dusty years gradually flashed the color of the past. The director recalled the real reason why he joined the army, the lovelorn made him tired of the world, and he hoped to use death to avenge the other party, "to make her feel guilty for the rest of her life". What drives people to war is not necessarily the sound of propaganda, the loudspeaker of patriotism, or the rallying cry of a leader. Sometimes, some trivial things, such as the loss and disappointment of adolescence, can make people have a death sentence. Although this determination seems so naive in the face of true cruelty. On the "Road to Hell" in Beirut, the troops were suppressed by sniper fire occupying the commanding heights and huddled in the street drains. This passage is narrated by the director, Frank, and war correspondent Ron. Ron was shocked by the danger of the battlefield and the numbness of the people - the people stood on the balcony with their families and mouths, like watching a war movie, it was none of their business. Frank only cared about not taking advantage of his Galil rifle, so he had to snatch the MAG machine gun of his comrade-in-arms and rushed out of the trench. In the eyes of the director, Frank, standing in the middle of the road pouring fire on the enemy, is almost brave. Under the huge portrait of Bashir full of bullet holes, he shot and danced his body like a waltz. He was completely intoxicated by the crazy game of war and killing. Like the Sabra and Shatila massacre 200 yards away. Just the day before, the leader of the Lebanese Falangist Party, the Maronite Christian Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated, and his followers were brewing a frantic revenge campaign. This is the first time the film narrates the same scene from multiple perspectives, intentionally blurring the boundaries between viewpoints. Try to splicing and restore the original appearance of the event and form a common memory of the parties involved.
Combining the war experiences of several people is actually a pathological process of an ordinary person from participating in war to fearing war, and finally to being obsessed with war. In order to realize one's own value or escape from reality and go to the battlefield, the conversion and blind obedience to the collective make it lose the individual will, and the collective action also eliminates the individual's sense of guilt. Get caught up in it without knowing it. When people fall into an absurd situation where they cannot escape, over time, they will regard pain as happiness, kill as beauty, and use this as their own liberation. The fantasy that always haunts the director's mind can also be explained as the baby is born from the mother's body (amniotic fluid) and gradually enters the society, has no choice to wear military uniform, is artificially endowed with essence instead of self-selection, cannot control his own destiny, can only be passive. Choose to kill and move towards the alienation of human nature. There are two details, Camille's son plays a war game with a toy gun; the psychologist's son steals a fruit knife during the adults' conversation, thinking of the RPG child who was shot. Are the ideas about masculinity instilled from childhood correct, and can only fighting be able to reflect masculine values? Or, in the context of the Middle East, only war is the only way out?
Along with fantasies and dreams, vivid individuals narrate purely subjective experiences. The film is presented in the form of animation, which is also based on this purpose. Just imagine that if it is shown in real life, on the one hand, it is easy for the audience to be entangled in the details and fidelity of the scene. On the other hand, no matter how realistic the special effects are, dreams and surreal passages must be very abrupt, and the unique alienation and virtuality of animation are used to deliberately confuse dreams and reality. The narration relies on reality, but does not stick to reality, highlights the subjective feelings of the interviewees, and achieves a psychological level of truth. For example, in the interview with the psychologist, when the psychological experiment of "fake playground memory" was finished, the screen switched back to reality, but the countryside scene outside the window was quietly replaced by a playground, and a huge Ferris wheel and hot air balloon. A skateboarder enters the painting from the right. Fantasy and reality appear inside the same lens, making it impossible for us to tell the difference. The film uses music to pre-narrate events, heralding the fate of the soldiers, the absurd and irrational implied period of war. On the "Love Ship", the soldiers sang and danced to "Enola Gay", but they did not know that the lyrics contained unknown, such a love song on the surface actually alluded to the Hiroshima atomic bomb incident. The lyrics "Enola gay, is mother proud of little boy today." little boy is the name of the atomic bomb. Enola Gay is the name of the B52 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb. "It's 8:15, and that's the time that it's always been." The huge power of the explosion stopped the clocks in Hiroshima at 8:15. Before long, a bomber whizzed past, blowing the "love boat" to pieces. Ronnie and the rest of the Armored Forces hummed "Good Morning Lebanon" defiantly, strolled leisurely on country roads, and swept through city streets, where tanks provided perfect shelter. The lyrics sing "Tear me apart, I'm bleeding..." The camera moved rapidly, imitating the perspective of the flight of a bullet, and the tank commander was shot instantly, bleeding profusely. "I Bombed Beirut" is adapted from the anti-war song "I Bombed North Korea". It is accompanied by a montage of accidental bombing of friendly forces, terrorist attacks, crazy revenge and even the accidental killing of civilians, showing the inhumanity, absurdity and comicality of war.
The root of all nightmares comes from the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The fireworks flying in the night sky in the director's fantasy are actually the flares released by the army in order to facilitate the massacre of the Lebanese Falangists at night. At this moment, the director, Boaz, Camille and countless Israeli soldiers were enjoying the golden view of the night sky with great interest. It's like watching festive fireworks. Under the protection of a large group, responsibilities are dispersed and personal guilt is minimized, so that Israeli soldiers can feel so at ease. When separated from the collective, conscience gradually recovers, forming the traumatic memory of the perpetrator. Reflected in Boaz, the director, Camille, and Lonnie, a series of psychological symptoms such as nightmares, hallucinations, autism, and guilt appeared. After a 40-hour massacre, the two refugee camps were littered with corpses. The mutilated corpses seemed to be crying about their tragic experiences during their lifetimes, including torture, torture, castration, and dismemberment. Even some women and children are not immune. There has never been a formal official investigation into the number of people killed, ranging from hundreds to thousands, with no consensus, like another wound in history. After the incident, international public opinion was in an uproar. The main responsible person, Israeli Defense Minister Sharon was dismissed, but he still retained his cabinet seat and served as a minister regardless of the ministry. In less than three years, he was appointed as the minister of commerce and industry. Years later, as if the unhappy past in the suburbs of West Beirut had faded, Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 2001.
Human nature itself prevents us from going into the dark side of the psyche. Amnesia about the massacre, on the one hand, comes from the perpetrator's post-traumatic stress response (PTSD), which is a psychological defense mechanism. On the other hand, it comes from society, from collective silence. "Memory is ever-changing and alive." Human memory flows fickle and is highly susceptible to environment and cues. For individuals, memory is constantly reconstructed under the social framework and has reality. If the environment chooses to forget and whitewash, it will inevitably lead to the selective amnesia of the individual. The underlying reason comes from the Holocaust - ignoring or even assisting the slaughter is no different from a criminal. The director can't face his conscience and hide his dark memories. Paradoxically, the tragedy of the Holocaust by the Nazis has been transformed into a cultural memory of suffering that transcends the times. Through traumatic memories, the Jewish people achieved national cohesion, built a state and successfully defended the fruits. It also activates the cohesion of hostile ethnic groups by creating traumatic memories, arousing hatred and confrontation. Victims become perpetrators, creating new misery and injustice. The situation in the Middle East fell into an endless loop.
The psychologist told the director that the only way to avoid sinking in the nightmare is to open up the knot, stop escaping, and explore the truth of history. For any nation, to face up to the history of crime is just like the history of suffering, never mentioning the atrocities at the national level, and even banning the acts of mourning purely out of humanitarianism, it is a stupid short-sighted behavior. It should be known that forgetting is only temporary, and memory will only be awakened again at a certain time, becoming a charge horn to change course. The best way to avoid the cycle of violence is reconciliation, and reconciliation presupposes that people know the truth and find out the truth. It is ensured that the "common memory" of the witnesses is not obliterated, and people communicate and discuss with each other through "shared memory" to form a collective memory. In the end, it becomes the cultural memory of the nation through ritual acts such as national public sacrifices. Achieve true reconciliation and harmony, not vengeance and reckoning. This also seems to respond to Boaz's questioning of the director at the beginning of the film, as the most important communication medium today, the film can be used for psychotherapy. For those who witnessed the war or even the general public, by watching films - traumatic events reconstructed by the media. Its intuitive visual image and reproducible narration are conducive to the formation of a trauma identity and collective memory. The dissemination power of the film can attract the attention of a wide range of audiences, arouse people's discussion, so that the truth will no longer be buried, and the tragedy will not happen again.
A female psychologist once said that with "stereoscopic glasses", any cruel scene in the world is a war movie, and even if you are in the scene, it is like being outside of it. Based on this mentality, the Lebanese people can stand on the balcony and gossip while watching Israeli soldiers being shot to death; Israeli soldiers can also enjoy the "massacre fireworks" calmly. When we watched the first 90 minutes of animation clips, we were probably just spectators, playing with the suffering of others in a curious manner. The film uses 90 minutes of fantasy and alienation to highlight the reality of the last 50 seconds. Unpredictable, the truth hits the heart like a hammer. Our "stereoscopic glasses" are broken, it forces us to look inside - at no time can we remain indifferent to human suffering.
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