I recently got around to watching "A Waltz with Bashir" and while it was a powerful and well made film about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, at the end of it, I was unhappy with the film because intellectually, it did not have anything to say about the horrors that had occurred.
It recounted the experiences of one man dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder that he suffered from as a result of participating in the fighting, but past that, it did not have anything to say of weight about the events, beyond perhaps 'humans are good at killing each other, one revenge inciting the opposite side to do the same'.
By the end of the film, it's just the feel-bad movie of the year, and you feel if there was nothing of worth to take from the film. Not that there has to be a positive message. Or a negative one. Just *any* message of *any* intellectual depth.
If you make a movie about explosions, no one expects Shakespeare. If you make a movie about events you compare to the Nazi holocaust, you'd damn well better have something to say about it.
In some ways, the film just made me feel like the residents in a thousand mile radius of the area were all guilty, either for participating in the violence on either side, or doing nothing to stop it, or get away from it.
All of those people that live there and accept their fate and lot in life like lambs to the slaughter are in my mind, just as guilty as those carrying out the slaughter on both sides.
To use a notion from Kant, humans have a moral imperative to act, and inaction does not bear any less guilt than actively participating in the wrongdoing.
Get up and walk away. Don't stop walking until you're dead or you're somewhere else where war is not a daily fact of life. Short of 'they will shoot me the moment I try to escape', there is no valid excuse for the failure to do so.
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