Analyze the Development of a Theme, Essay Example

The Complex Narrative of Mediatory History

In the contemporary filmmaking, the primary theme or motif can be reflected and developed in numerous ways. All depends on filmmakers’ approach and desired effect. Some movies are straightforward in the development of their primary theme and can be easily understood by the target audience. However, there are those movies that require attention to every detail in order to realise the art of main theme development and expression. The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of the main theme of the movie “Waltz with Bashir” through the way the narrative was structured. In other words, the contribution of the narrative to the development and expression of the main theme is explained on various occasions.

The primary theme of the movie is a mediatory history, how history is perceived through various mediators and personal perceptions. In this regard, meditation is used to reflect upon one’s memory, personal experience and the actual history. The main purpose of the movie in this context was to show how a dream could transform into a memory, fiction into fact and future into present and past. Ari’s search for his lost memories and knowledge of the history are entwined with his dreams and hallucinations that are a result of his psychological defence from the traumatic experience of the Lebanon war. The filmmakers aimed to show a quest for knowing history through the diversity of means and interpretations which eventually lead the audience to achieve such systematic and multi-facet understanding of a historical event that it is virtually in the middle of it. In this regard, after realising one’s location I history it becomes inescapable irrespective of the medium of its interpretation.

The theme itself is complex in the animated movie, but its development through the narrative is even more complicated. In order to demonstrate the diversity of mediations of history unravelling, the circular narrative on multiple levels is used. In this regard, the narrator Ari Folman tells the setting of the planned project of investigating the lost memory and history in the present time, which is 2006 in the movie. The shown present is the first level of narrative, the second level is the described past of 1982, and the third level is Ari’s inner world or dreams and hallucinations inspired by various events and thoughts. These three levels or dimensions are changing one another with what may seem a chaotic manner. However, there is an order to these levels of narration: present tense events trigger interpretation of the inner world which creates dreams and hallucinations. In their turn, dreams trigger the supressed memories of the past traumatic experience bringing back the real memories of the event.

In this regard, the starting point of narrative and the unravelling of the circle is Ari’s meeting with an old friend and comrade ate described present and his realisation that he had no memories about the war of 1982 and the massacre in the refugee camp that took place. His further thoughts make him talk to his ex-comrades and trigger his dreams with a further return of the actual memories. Furthermore, this gives the narrative integrity. Individual experience of living is re-enacted through the experiences of the others. The past seems to be present and present seems to be past. The previous moment of the narration is perceived in its factual and emotional integrity.

The combination of two realistic plotlines of the past and the present via the media of inner perception and dreams is aimed at demonstration of human systematic realisation of time and a cause-effect relation between things in the course of history and one’s development. The description of Ari’s life on its various stages demonstrates one’s growth and also a spiral movement and maturation of an individual in the historical framework. In other words, moves back and forward in time, and flashbacks give dynamics to the narration and the sense of an individual in time.

The structure of the narrative corresponds to the circle of Waltz, where scenes of Ari’s meetings with his ex-comrades are followed by flashbacks connected by surreal interpretations or dreams. Each new detail found provides a new element for the circle, making the next one even more sophisticated and temporarily longer. Metaphorically speaking, the more sophisticated and longer is the circle in the Waltz, the more detailed is the historical event described. This circular narrative can be demonstrated by the following examples.

The first circle starts with the present conversation of Ari with Boaz Rein, which triggers the nightmare about dogs, which in its turn results in the flashback of the real dogs shooting during the war. These circle triggers further thoughts and surreal imagery of the Lebanese war. In order to explain the connection between past, present and dreamlike interpretations Ori Sivan’s explanation of the psychological impact on memory and traumatic experience is given as voice over.

The further circles follow the same patterns, string with conversations with ex-comrades who add new details to the story and trigger new dreams and visions resulting in the new flashbacks. In this regard, Ari’s conversation with Carmi Can’an resulted in Love boat dream and a flashback of the family killed in a car. Further encounters include Ronny Dayg, Shmuel Frenken and Dr. Azahara Solomon. Each narrator is easily defined from one another, emphasising each narrator’s contextual subjectivity to the subject. Then, the narration reaches the point of unity of all three levels: past, present and psyche. Ari’s flashback of his leave is combined with his memories of his first love affair then back in 1982 camp.

Then he has another flashback of a soldier watching porn, yet, it seems to be that he is creating his own video or maybe he imagined it all, and there was no video at all. These scenes bring the narrative to the point of confusion where the reality of past and present is confused with surreal interpretations. The revelation of the narration is Ari’s statement “I am afraid what will happen next”, which demonstrates the integrity of his identity irrespective of time and in its unity of the past and present. The fear of the next events is what united both moments of time and Ari’s psyche.

Another crucial aspect of how narration unravels the main theme of mediatory history is that it starts from an individual quest for remembering one’s past and ends with building detailed common knowledge of the past event based on diversity of personal, subjective micro-narratives. In this regard, the event of the massacre becomes an actual reality demonstrated through the actual news footage only after the various subjective segments of the event were shown. In other words, the main message here is that what is perceived to be the real past event or history is largely based on the numerous subjective details of that events and subjective realities of people who took part in those events. In this regard, history is perceived as a subjective experience of various people who through their micro-narratives contribute to a systematic realisation of an event and its reflection in the historical documentaries and books.

In terms of the correlation between individual subjectivity and objective reality of the past, the first one can be found through the analysis of one’s own memories and their interpretation. On the other hand, the second can be realised through the common shared experience, in which subjectivity of each constituent experience is rationalised by each other. The same is the case of politically or socially constructed perception of history; it is further objectified by the personal experiences of the exact participants as it was shown on the example of Ari and his ex-comrades. Consequently, the complexity and multi-facet structure of the narration contribute to the realisation that history is created through the diversity of mediators and is constantly dynamic since its mediators change just as their perception and interpretation of the past events. On the other hand, the overall circular, multi-level and multi-narrative structure of the narrative also suggests a single constancy in the mediatory history – the truth of one’s place in history irrespective of one’s memory and its personal interpretation. In this regard, memory is viewed as such a tool that creates narratives of the past that suits one’s own preferred interpretation . The only way to understand history is through the diversity of tools, which eventually result in the mutual elimination of subjectivity leaving facts.

Overall, from all mentioned above it can be concluded that the main theme of the animated movie Waltz with Bashir is developed through the use of a complex narrative. In this regard, the mediatory nature of history is shown in the circular narrative of one’s quest of retrieving the memory of the past. By structuring the narrative in the triple unity of past present and one’s psyche, history is demonstrates as result of multiple subjective realities that due to the mutual compensation create the constancy of one’s pace in history which is no longer dependent on memory or self-perception. Using the circular structure of the narrative, the quest for truth corresponds to the cognitive process of learning and understanding a certain fact in its inter-disciplinary and multi-facet complexity. The unity of all three levels at the culminating point when the actual news footage of massacre was shown demonstrated that irrespective of the medium and interpretation the fact remains the same – lives were taken, and the blood was shed.