Annapolis Capital Punishment

CP does not watch tv but we do often rent films. This set-up has never seemed to bother CP junior 1 and 2 but instead has exposed them to a wider world, and a commercial-free one at that. We choose what to watch together. I have occasionally recommended films but recently we saw two which we heartily recommend and which received the critical acclaim they so much deserved.

Shades of Apocalypse Now! The horror! Waltz With Bashir is an amazing animated film from Israel which centers around the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the murder of Lebanese leader Bashir Gemayel and subsequent bloodbath in Sabra and Shatila. This is an anti-war film par excellence with eerily beautiful animation consisting of war flashbacks and interviews with the protagonist and his war comrades decades later. I watched it with my wife who lived in Israel during the war and I can tell you that this film is so revealing about the challenges facing Israeli society and the Middle East while also dragging up themes of memory, psychology and post-traumatic stress disorder. It works on many levels and though it deals with a profoundly disturbing and horrible event, it is, as I said, eerily beautiful. Does the animation and the music make it seem all the more real or all the more fantastic? There is one scene of real footage. It will shock you. Not an easy film on any level. See waltzwithbashir

I have doubts. Do you? Is doubt a bad thing for the faithful? If we strongly and most heartily believe something is true or real, does that make it true or real? Superb acting and an explosive plot combine to tell a story of faith and doubt, of strict adherence to doctrine versus a more liberal outlook. Race and gender and social change find their way into the film which centers around Meryl Streep as a strict Catholic school mistress and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the more jovial and easygoing priest. Have faith in my recommendation and see doubt


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