In his latest film, a crucial masterpiece titled ‘Why War’, Amos Gitai reminds us of an exchange of letters between Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis, and Albert Einstein, the scientific genius. If only we would listen to these brilliant men.
“Who are the people who are trying in this situation to build bridges? I’m just an architect, I like bridges. ”
The day after interviewing Amos Gitai, and his actors Irene Jacob and Micha Lescot, in Venice I woke up to the news of a 300,000 people strong demonstration which took place in Tel Aviv, to mourn the murders of yet another six Israeli hostages and denounce the current government which seems allergic to negotiations. In the past 11 months, we have witnessed thousands of innocent lives lost of both sides of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. All because let’s face it, diplomacy is dead. Or maybe it never really lived.
In his latest film, a crucial masterpiece titled Why War, Amos Gitai reminds us of an exchange of letters between Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis, and Albert Einstein, the scientific genius. “Why War?” their penned exchange, was published in 1933 as a pamphlet, just as Hitler and his party of destruction were rising to power in Germany. What is important about these letters is that the two men foresaw the future fate reserved for Europe, and the world at large, while political leaders all around the globe ignored it and allowed the chaos to come. It is often the role of intellectuals to prophesize about our future, and that is in part due to these enlightened individuals’ ability to read the present better than the average man. As Gitai himself has explained to me in the past, it’s not that artists can foresee the future, it’s that they live more fully in the here and now, noticing the encroaching warning signs of the disasters to be.
What is interesting about Gitai’s choice of inspiration is that Freud and Einstein lived in a Europe not unlike the Middle East right now. A hundred years ago, as Gitai is fond of saying, Europe experienced its darkest hours and now Europeans are only too ready to look down on the MENA region for their barbarities, forgetting perhaps what their countrymen were capable of, less than a century ago. Here is an extract from the press conference in Venice for Why War, with Gitai’s insight on Europe.
Accompanying him on this press junket were the beautiful, ever elegant Irene Jacob, who is an actress I’ve grown to love thanks to Gitai. But also the striking Micha Lescot, whose previous appearance I adored in Olivier Assayas’s Hors du Temps and whom I’ll watch next in House on the stage at the Barbican.
Enlisting the help of some of his extraordinary frequent collaborators like Jacob and Lescot — both actors are also featured in Gitai’s play House which is touring the world at the moment and will land in London in late September — but also Mathieu Amalric as Freud and Jérôme Kircher, Gitai creates yet another mind blowing masterpiece, one that could provide us with a roadmap to a solution. While I’ve stopped asking Gitai if there is hope for his homeland, I did prod him on whether he ever feels he may be “preaching to the choir” by making these stunning films which can be fully appreciated only by those of a higher intellect.
“Darling, what is the alternative?” He asks back. “There are a lot of accessible films here,” in Venice, he jokes, “you saw Nicole Kidman, you don’t need me.” He gets serious, quickly, “let’s be modest, we’re not changing the world, I don’t want to disappoint you, and anyway, cinema has never changed the world and art in general, never.” I personally disagree, and our back and forth throughout the years I’ve interviewed him, allows me to say this to the Maestro Gitai. “They charge memories at best,” he continues “and memory changes something — I always talk about Picasso in this case.” His painting of the massacre in the Basque town of Guernica by the fascist alliance is the most remembered piece of work by the Spanish artist, yet, Gitai points out, if one were to tally up who won between Picasso and dictator Francisco Franco, well, “Franco won,” he says, without missing a beat, “he stayed in power more than 30 years, so no, art doesn’t change the world.”
“It’s not immediate,” the change, Gitai concedes, “it’s not like tomorrow Netanyahu will fall down, let’s be realistic.” But he did admit that art does change our collective memory.
Jacob adds, “Why War? is not an accessible question, you can’t make an accessible film about such a complex question — it would be didactic or too simplifying — this is a question with which you have to struggle, and maybe be disoriented.”
Lescot, whose character best creates the string of emotions that ties this intellectual film together, adds crisply “it’s not about understanding, it’s about feeling.”
To call Gitai prolific would be an understatement. He’s never idle, even this year after undergoing a horrific operation in January, he was at the Berlinale in February with a film, Shikun, then back in Berlin with the play House in June, then off to Venice for Why War, followed by London and Rome in the early fall with his play. At times, he’s been known to juggle a play, a film and an exhibition, all at the same time. And he’s an avid writer, and reader, which ties all his work together of course.
Why War was filmed during the run of House, and some of the sets of the latter serve double duty as the film’s location.
Before its world premiere in Venice, Gitai’s latest film was already drawing calls for its boycott by a group of creatives, mostly Palestinian, who signed a petition titled “No space for propaganda in Venice — No artwashing at the 81st Mostra del Cinema di Venezia.” I’m always amazed when artists join these irrational causes, first of all never having watched the final product they are attempting to boycott, and secondly, calling for this cancellation based on someone’s nationality, or religion. In this case, for them to target two filmmakers like Gitai and fellow Israeli director Dani Rosenberg (The Vanishing Soldier and in Venice this year, Of Dogs and Men) went beyond insanity, to a place and state of mind that made me doubt my own ability for empathy. While the lack of control when it comes to the current events can understandably drive anyone to madness, I think it would help to take a step back, watch these works first and then sit down as a group of artists to discuss it in a productive way.
A boycott of creatives has never helped a conflict. If we look at the current boycott of Russian filmmakers, we can begin to understand why. The discourse has become one sided and therefore, not a discourse any longer, right? Monologues, if we know Shakespeare, usually belong to the mad and ill fated.
One of the most poignant moments in a film already pregnant with meaning belongs to Lescot as Einstein, when he recites the part of the letter addressed to Freud which points out: “As for me, the normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.” I tell Lescot this during our interview, in the covered area on the beachside terrace of the Excelsior on the Lido, and ask him if playing Einstein proved a challenge, during the run of a play where he’s portraying someone else. “No, because it’s like an actor playing Einstein,” he admits, “it’s so enormous to play him — and Amos said, do it step by step. So it’s like an actor looking at himself in the mirror, who puts on a mustache, thinks ‘well I look a bit like him, I can play Einstein’ — that was the process.” Lescot adds, importantly, “my character was good with numbers but not letters, the way he wrote his letter was too polite for me, Freud is better with the words.” Lescot found the humor of Einstein missing and the letter too straight forward, too “diplomatic,” he adds. Maybe that’s what I loved about it.
Jacob talks instead about how it was to be in Tel Aviv during these times. Some of the film is shot in Israel, along with Paris, Berlin and Vienna. “It was definitely not easy, because when we arrived, you think, ah well everyone is continuing with their lives,” the actress admits, “you can think it’s a normal life, but then you see it’s not normal because everybody speaks about it, everybody is affected by it, and after two or three days,” Lescot then finishes the sentence, “you can feel the war everywhere.” The actor also adds that making a film in Tel Aviv in May, was “very important.”
Amos Gitai, Irene Jacob and Micha Lescot photographed by © Giorgio Zucchiatti, used with permission of La Biennale
Jacob then asks a rhetorical question, “can you watch images on television and be OK, or can you be in a country where there is war and have a normal life?” This question, she ponders, and how war is getting under your skin, every moment you live through it.
Along with the Freud/Einstein correspondence, Gitai also uses Freud’s Malaise dans la civilisation, Virginia Woolf’s The Three Guineas, Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and Evgenia Rudenko’s & Alexander Plank’s Un point lumière flou, along with Gitai’s own The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, inspired by Josephus Flavius’s The Jewish War.
The haunting soundtrack mixes Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Op. 66 / Dies Irae - Lacrimosa dies illa, with Alexey Kochetkov’s Lament for Yitzhak, Aurora Sonora, Late Night Impro and Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo, arranged by Alexey Kochetkov. Additional music is provided by Louis Sclavis Kyoomars Musayyebi Simon and Markus Stockhausen.
“I would like to build bridges instead of burning them.”
In his director’s statement Gitai points out: “If I am an Israeli citizen and I see what happened to some women on October 7, it is almost natural to think of revenge. And equally, if I am a Palestinian and I see my loved ones dying under the bombings, I will feel the same feeling of revenge and hatred that leads to armed conflicts.”
This is why I personally feel a boycott against someone who so clearly sees both sides simply points to the inability of some to understand that every conflict, and every solution to peace requires a conversation between the two sides at war. Peace is a co-production and unfortunately, in today’s world, we would rather be right than have peace.
All images courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia, used with permission.