The book examines romantic love from a curious perspective: on one hand it examines its changing nature and impact upon our lives in the modern day, and on the other it examines statements made by a people who have committed murder "in the name of love" - more specifically the killing of a partner or former partner. Each chapter begins with quotes from songs, poems, and the like regarding love but also those taken from interviews with murderers - and of course the interesting part of this is how utterly alike the sentiments expressed are.As I'm currently grappling with a fictional character who is impelled toward terrible acts by the loss of love, this is all very interesting and useful stuff - all food for thought and the creative process. The canapes and miniature duck wraps at the reception afterwards (courtesy of the British Friends Of The University Of Haifa) were very tasty as well.
Tonight I finally got around to watching 'Waltz With Bashir'.It has that odd look of a lot of today's computer assisted animation where everything's perhaps a little too fluid. That's not really a criticism, just an observation really.
I'll say what you're probably expecting me to say, because it's true: in visual terms it's beautifully done. I did feel however that for a film so concerned with the trauma of war it didn't entirely go as deep as it could have done into that theme/issue but instead preferred to skirt it with images, little allusory remarks, and so on. I'd tentatively suggest that it may be a case of 'style over substance' to an extent. I think I also miss a lot of nuance and feeling through watching it in subtitled form - but then I don't speak Hebrew and my co-viewer wasn't fluent either. All this aside, as a series of vivid snapshots of war though it definately succeeds.
The film's climax is shocking and extremely sobering, one of those times when everything goes a bit quiet in the room for a while afterwards. The abrupt switch (I won't go into specifics, you'll know if/when you watch it) brought to mind Theodor Adorno's dictum that there can be "no poetry after Auschwitz" - in the face of such horror, artifice is meaningless.
Nothing like canapés to help you remember an event ;)
ReplyDeleteI often hear the no poetry after Auschwitz saying - I then think, in that case, was there any point in poetry before Auschwitz?
As I interpret it it's more figurative, a sense that art and all its stylised technique cannot be any more profound than the facts, evidence, images of such a terrible thing itself. For instance someone could paint an intricate and intellectualised abstract painting of the killing fields of Cambodia but a photograph taken at the time will always be so much more powerful. But then of course, even that can't explain or fully convey the reality. That's my reading anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt raises quite an interesting debate on art's limitations really