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PARTISAN REVIEW
and that he is cooperating with Jewish actors . Now, they are sure that
he is a traitor. I was jarred even more when Madi explains her dissonant
approach to the Holocaust and when, ultimately, she violently
denounces it as the new Israeli religion and, in strong language, wishes
they would stop remembering it.
Even though I myself was fortunate to escape in the nick of time, I
have a certain aversion to Holocaust studies. But 1 lost my grandparents
and many other relatives, and thus believe one way to avoid another
Holocaust is by remembering. Clearly,
Balagan
is about politics, about
what certainly is one of the most explosive and insuperable conflicts in
today's world. The film, however, is an esthetic masterpiece that uses the
political situation to go beyond it, and thereby breaks new ground.
Actually, I keep wondering whether these four films are the avant–
garde of a new wave of post-postmodernism, post-Communist, or post–
ideological productions, of esthetics that somehow emerge after a large
political upheaval, such as Dadaism, Futurism, and Surrealism after World
War
I,
Abstract Expressionism during World War
II,
and Existentialism
afterwards.
(I
am not certain of this, but these foreign film producers are
worthy of our attention.) Finally, 1 cannot help but ask myself why in
America, where filmmakers who are equally adept at creating special and
original effects, have superior equipment, and larger budgets, don't more
frequently manage to think beyond making movies for what they believe
will interest the maximum number of people - that is, consumers. For
motion pictures that play to an audience's sense of humor, to preoccu–
pations with crime and the underlife, or to identification with victims
and victimizers, 1 believe, are unable to cut through from the prosaic to
the unconventional and exhilarating, or even to the irritating feelings,
which alone may manage
to
penetrate
to
their viewers' deepest emo–
tions, and to their esthetic sense.
To answer my original question about the difference between ordi–
nary and extraordinary films: there are no formulas to explain it, nor can
a summary demonstrate it. Only the experienced eye can perceive it.
E. K.
