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Listen, this process called poetry is an exercise in imagining memory, and then having that memory snare and cherish imagination.

Breyten Breytenbach


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🦋 Breakthrough

I watched Waltz with Bashir with clinical detachment, and without understanding that this detachment was an authentic response to how the film was composed -- that the intent was to push the audience away from the events being narrated rather than to pull us in. I was not failing to get into the movie but was understanding Folman's approach to his own lost experience -- wondering about the motivations and reactions of the people talking, "as if watching a movie" as Folman's psychiatrist friend puts it; and was completely surprised, at the end of the film, to find myself sobbing -- this brought me full circle to the very beginning of the movie, where I had been pretty choked up over Boaz' description of the dogs he had to shoot.

I was a little confused by the psychiatrist's assertion early in the film, to the effect that memory can only take us "where we want to go," that there is a human mechanism which prevents us from remembering things that will damage us. This seems wrong to me as a general statement, and counter to my experience. But maybe he had intended it only in the context of the conversation they were having.

posted morning of Sunday, February 8th, 2009
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