Vancouver International Film Festival 2008

Israel

Lemon Tree

Review by Cameron Maitland

Like a tried and true genre, some world issues get worn and start to seem cliché when returned to relentlessly on film. That’s why Eran Riklis's Lemon Tree, a film dealing both directly and metaphorically with the Israel-Palestine conflict, needs finesse in telling its story.

Lemon Tree follows the intertwined lives of two women - one a Palestinian lemon farmer living along the Israel border and the other (her neighbour), the wife of the new Israeli Defence Minister. When the secret service deems the Palestinian lemon grove a security threat, it begins a cold war of lawyers, guard posts and fences in which the two women are caught, with little say in their own destinies.

As a political metaphor the film is cumbersome and obvious in its execution but, thankfully, as a drama the film is a delight. Each character has layers and intricacies that betray the heavy-handedness of the political agenda. Though it is a film about bitter fighting, there are heavy doses of whimsy and humour that accompany the day-to-day lives of these two women and especially the outside players in their lives. The acting and directing also serve to raise the film, with truly effective and subtle performances, above the level of propaganda.

Lemon Tree proves that it doesn’t take a fresh political view or strange artistic hand to re-tell the same ideals that other films have touched on before. Instead it simply takes a good story, well told with enough unique flavour to keep it afloat.

Lemon Tree
Eran Riklis | Israel | 2008 | 106min

Israel

Waltz With Bashir

Review by Cameron Maitland

Ever since Richard Linklater utilized documentary-like animation in his philosophical film Waking Life, directors have sought to utilize the animated documentary to tell their stories. With Waltz with Bashir, writer-director Ari Folman may be the first person to find the perfect balance between the reality of documentary and the fanciful nature of animation.

The film follows Folman’s own journey dealing with leftover dreams and memories from his time as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War. He’s haunted by what little he can remember but more so by how much he has forgotten. Folman journeys around Europe meeting other soldiers and trying to piece together his disparate memories into a coherent narrative. The more he hears, the more he remembers and each memory is recreated for us in rich animated form.

The animated nature of the film is really what makes it unique and, in a way, what makes it work. What would be a documentary of talking heads and sometimes cloying European psychoanalysis instead turns into a dark and surrealistic examination of the shifting memories and dreams of the soldiers. No documentary could capture a dream of a 40-foot nude woman swimming alongside a soldiers boat, but with animation the poetry and beauty of each soldier’s recollections play beautifully.

The surreal nature of the animated stories and personal nature of Folman’s vision make Waltz with Bashir an endlessly unique film with one of the most shocking and interesting takes on the Lebanon conflict in years.

Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman | Israel/Germany | 2008 | 87min

Sun. Sept. 28 | 10:00am | Empire Granville Theatre 7
Thur. Oct. 2 | 9:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre 7
Sun. Oct. 5 | 1:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre 7