Hybrid Animation in Skies of Lebanon

Sneak Preview Feature for August 2022 (Reviewing Mazlo's film & Watching If/Then on the Criterion Channel)

Each month, I’m planning to send an informal “sneak preview” that teases a feature essay along with some musings or mini-features (reviews, recommendations, etc). I’d also like to use this space to answer comments and emails on occasion, should a conversation snowball beyond these initial musings. Let’s get to it!

Teaser Trailer

In two weeks, I’ll be posting my first feature essay. The topic: Christopher Nolan. Given the number of Nolan fans out there, I suppose I’m coming out of the gate swinging with this one. I used to be a big fan of Nolan, but over the years I’ve found his work lacking in some respects, which I’ll get into in the feature piece. I’m expecting – sort of hoping for – a bit of backlash to that essay, because I think that’s part of the fun of talking about films in this forum: I share my hot takes, then you share yours.

Review: Skies of Lebanon (2020)

Skies of Lebanon (2020), the first feature film from director Chloé Mazlo, finally made its U.S. debut this summer, two years after its premiere at the 59th Cannes film festival. I was able to catch its last LA screening with some friends at the Laemmle Royal in Sawtelle – an excellent theater for independent cinema – and I’m so glad I did. Inspired by Mazlo’s family history, the film follows Alice (Alba Rohrwacher), a Swiss ex-pat who moves to Lebanon around 1955 for a nannying gig, falls in love with an astrophysicist named Joseph (Wajdi Mouawad), gets married, and decides to make the country her permanent home.

Between their meeting and the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, the film covers twenty (or so) years of Alice and Joseph’s life together through a mix of stop-motion animation and live action vignettes, which sets a playful tone for the halcyon days of their relationship. Eventually a hybrid of the two styles takes over as an altered frame rate disrupts the flow of live action, creating an impression of stop motion movement. During this sequence we see Joseph and Alice fill an apartment together, raise a daughter – Mona (Isabelle Zighondi) who we see learning piano in the living room – and form a sense of community as Alice’s artistic career takes off alongside Joseph’s rocket engineering.

The Lebanon captured in this portion is a winking pastiche: still backdrops of Beirut sprinkled with extras in period-appropriate clothing that present the cozy feeling of a community theater performance. But that all changes when a radio broadcast announces the start of the Lebanese Civil War. We see Alice dressing a cake for the family and friends gathered in her living room as the broadcast airs. Then she walks out to their balcony where the guests have gathered to watch the disruptions below. The camera looks back on these guests as the candles on Alice’s cake slowly burn.

From there, the film takes on a more serious tone as Alice and Joseph’s apartment transforms into a shelter for their extended family after the bombings displace many of them from their homes and places of business. The community theater aura persists throughout this portion of the film, but mostly in metaphorical representations of the war (e.g. a city corner divided by a pile of sandbags – the masked soldiers on either side representing the larger scale conflicts between militia groups).

While this external narrative of the war plays out, the story in the apartment takes a turn towards realism. We see how the war impacts the family in their day-to-day lives. They ignore the power flickering on-and-off while they play cards at the dining table. They listen to bombings while they huddle in the building stairwell. And they fend off rumors of militia groups moving door-to-door to raid homes until said groups eventually invade their home.

Compared to the metaphorical representations of the war – which can feel a bit heavy-handed at times – the scenes that play out in the apartment are powerful. The more the situation escalates the more the idea of “home” comes into question for all of the characters. In one particularly charged scene Alice’s manager breaks some news: “We’re flying to Paris on Tuesday. The country won’t exist anymore in one week.” Alice concurs, adding, “If no one is brave enough to stay.”

In an interview with Semaine de la Critique Mazlo said, “It’s difficult to convey one’s attachment to a country because it isn’t rational. We struggle to understand why we fall in love with a country that isn’t ours.” Skies of Lebanon is a thorough exploration of that sentiment that left me wanting much more from Mazlo in the years to come.

Criterion Channel Pick: “IF/THEN Presents”

My favorite Criterion Channel feature last year was called “Art-House Animation” – a collection of 32 animated films displaying an incredible breadth of styles. Some highlights included: The Wolf House (2018), a Chilean stop-motion horror film about a woman who escapes from a German commune; Waltz with Bashir (2008), an animated autobiographical documentary about Israeli soldiers reliving memories from their service in the 1982 war with Lebanon; and Tower (2016), a rotoscope animated documentary about the 1966 shooting on the UT Austin campus.

This month’s “IF/THEN Presents” echoes that art-house spirit through a series of powerful documentary shorts. I’d highly recommend exploring the full collection, but for the sake of brevity I will draw your attention to one in particular: Mizuko (2019). That title word “mizuko” is a Japanese word for “life that does not make it to birth,” which also refers to a Buddhist ritual (Mizuko kuyō) for grieving after an abortion, stillbirth, or miscarriage. Rendered in a mix of watercolor animation, 16mm, and powerful stop-motion imagery¹, the film is a powerful evocation of the narrator’s inner state thanks to the unbelievable virtuosity of its filmmakers.

Denouement: A Shameless Plug

For those looking to get a primer on my film writing thus far, I want to share a link to an old publication in MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism Issue No. 9. It’s a video essay on the film There Will Be Blood (2007) paired with a supporting statement.

That’s all for this sneak preview.

See you at the movies,

Ryan

1. You can never watch too many hybrid animation movies!