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Movies that bang
by Jordan Hiller

RELENTLESS (2003)

Plato said the truth should be spoken plainly. It needs no fancying up or aggrandizing because it conveys on its own the weight and severity of the content. The truth, in other words, speaks for itself.

But would we recognize the truth when we saw it? Appreciate it if we heard it?

The art form of rhetorical speech has been perfected to such a degree by advertisers, and filmmakers, and E!, that society has been reduced to children staring at the cool kid on the first day of school, waiting for him to open his mouth and impart holy doctrines. At first, perhaps when we are less mature, we believe everything – everything seems true - even things that contradict one another – even ideas that are false in our hearts – even positions that feel intellectually untrue.

After a while all this believing becomes a burden as the rhetoric builds up like bubbling magma inside the volcano of our dignity and we despise being told what to think and despise being constantly pulled in any direction the rhetoreticians decide is best, and eventually we erupt.

The skeptics are born. We believe nothing. The truth may be out there, but you sure as hell don’t know it. At least not yet. Maybe the truth will come out in ten years, or twenty, or never – but I just can’t believe in you anymore. You have lead me astray too many times. This represents the reluctant attitude of people who still have the courage to care in 2003.

So the skeptic in me was on full alert the other night at the world theatrical premiere of Relentless, a documentary film brought to you by Discovery Productions and HonestReporting.com.

Plato has taught me that the name “HonestReporting” reeks of rhetoric. Only individuals who are dishonest would need to represent themselves so blatantly as honest. I volley questions like: “What intention might you be hiding?” and “You’re so busy trying to keep other reporters honest - who’s checking up on you”? Can you imagine the infinite conundrum created by organizations, each claiming to be the one that keeps all the others honest? Again, who are we to consider the peremptorily honest?

I must begin by stating that, without a doubt, the film has one message and this message is the entire purpose of the film: Israel has done everything in its power for peace. The Palestinians have done nothing for peace. They by no means want peace with Israel. They would kill us all if they had a chance and if things continue to go unchecked, they will get this chance.

It was unreservedly, the most frightening hour I have spent to memory. For fifty six minutes I couldn’t help but believe every earth-shattering word. Was it the clear representations of truths or the smooth finesse of rhetoric that had the power to mesmerize the audience? Of course it is a combination of both. However, Relentless does not rely (heavily) on telling us information in a convincing way – it allows the smoking gun to manifest itself before our eyes. Unless you want to go to the conspiracy theory level of skepticism and claim that the subtitles are inaccurate or the video has been doctored, it will be difficult to reject plain, visual proof. Not truth or rhetoric, but evidence and facts.

There are three formulations of victim-hood at play in Relentless, each more distasteful than the next. The first is the most superficial, commonplace, and obvious, and it is supplied by the filmmakers. Jews are victims. Victims of naiveté and senseless (extremist-religious) hate and wasted optimism. The second is, as mentioned earlier, victims of rhetoric in the audience who are duped by the bright screen, shiny graphics, and sincere narration. They watch without thinking of bigger pictures and larger issues. Finally, there is the most dangerous and undetectable victim - the victim of the voice inside that says “Be a skeptic till the end. Never believe. Things are bad, but not as bad as they want you to believe. They are just trying to get you angry for their own selfish purposes.” Dangerous, because it blinds us to the lesson history has continuously taught. Difficult to detect, because it has become our nature – it is our own familiar voice whispering these words. Sometimes even impossible to detect, because the victimization takes hold cunningly in that we are told not to become victims of rhetoric, only to fall prey to an entirely different denial of truth. It has become our defense mechanism, maintaining our precarious sanity in a world that has told us on many occasions that perhaps we had better live somewhere else.

To keep these areas of awareness at the forefront of our minds while watching the film is to experience Relentless intelligently and productively.

You will need to master all your faculties to get through the film without crumbling into a shivering heap of self-pity with near-maddening thoughts of despair and rage. Over and over again in our tender neshamas, “The horror…The horror” – it truly is a film that uses projected light to fill the screen with overwhelming darkness. It is a film that makes you want to act (perhaps their goal), but unfortunately, it presents a picture so uncompromisingly bleak, that all actions seem futile. Relentless is not only a title describing, as intended, the quantity of terror inflicted upon Israel by the Arab world, but it also, presumably unintentionally, reflects the way the film weighs upon our spirits. It is a relentless attack on our hope for peace.

The film begins, so as not to be called propaganda (although of course it necessarily is), by evenhandedly stating that the conflict in the Middle East has caused suffering to both sides, Jew and Arab. Shortly after, we receive a brief and simplified history lesson taking us from 1948 through the capturing of Jerusalem and the territories during the Six Day War. We are shown that the Arab world has not accepted our little country from the beginning and have committed terror attacks and open war since day one.

The bulk of the movie concentrates on the Oslo Agreement (people in the theatre began booing at the mere mention of this fiasco) and takes us on a step by step journey, listing what the agreement consisted of on both sides, how Israel fulfilled her commitments, and how the Palestinian Authority has not fulfilled any.

The look of the movie is a cross between MTV style in your face editing, Frontline reporting, and Bar-Mitzvah caliber camera work (most of the film, however, is archival footage). Overall, credit must be given to the filmmakers for creating a film that is sharp and well thought out as far as its mission is concerned. Relentless does not appear cheaply made as one might expect. Its greatest asset is the resources tapped to present footage that normally does not make it to the public. It is the type of visual documentation that makes us sigh, “Why doesn’t the world seem to understand this”? You’ll think, “Oh, this is great. We have this footage. Just show it on CNN or something and the whole world will watch and see and know – and it will all be over with.” So why is that never the case? Somehow blindness became (or has always been) the most prevalent disease infecting mankind – and not only in the case of radical Muslim terror, but in so many sensitive areas. It almost makes you think we are struggling as if in a dream world where the resolution is always out of reach. We can only raise our eyes to the heavens and ask and wonder and speculate. Victims.

Arafat, a focal point of the movie, is a figure unambiguously revealed as a two-faced mercenary. The world has woken up to this fact recently but the clever presentation constructed by Relentless, with a number of segments straight from Palestinian television, will have you dumbfounded with the extent of his brazenness. You will watch him on American television appearing like a deer caught in the headlights, fraught with sympathy and confusion, denouncing violence – then, on Palestinian TV, the same man is animated and emotional and focused – waving his fist as he praises martyrs and calls for jihad.

Rounding out the repulsiveness is an interview with the mother of a young boy who was murdered by Palestinians while hiking, dreadful images of a girl who was terribly burned in a firebombing, and actual footage of an Arab museum dedicated to reliving and praising the suicide attack on the Sbarros restaurant in Jerusalem. The recreation of this “tragedy” includes bloody limbs hanging from stools and off of tables and half eaten pizza crusts. We watch the patrons stroll through, some laughing. And your heart fills with hate. Relentless begs you to get angry.

Is that constructive? I don’t know…it’s hate and fear and petrifying awe mixed together in some numbing, stomach churning single emotion that makes you want to…to give up, or savagely kill them all, or shake some sense into them. Who’s “them”? Who’s our enemy? No one individual in particular. Everyone. The film doesn’t really say. We are left emotional and physical wrecks but without a specified recourse.

The trouble with defining the “enemy” based on the film is that one segment is entirely dedicated to education and the development of Arab and Palestinian youth.

What are we supposed to feel when we see tiny children reciting anthems of destruction and terror? Can a three year old girl be my enemy? These kindergarteners “want” (or are programmed to want) to kill all Jews and erase Israel from existence. Footage from so-called relief organization funded summer camps are shown to be training camps where ten year old boys practice combat fighting and jump through hoops of fire. We learn that the school text books do not mention Israel at all and maps display the entire country as a Palestinian domain. Should we pity these young impressionable children who are bred as single minded weapons of destruction? The children will not pity you or your child when committing jihad. These are impossible questions. Answers, please?

Relentless suggests and affectively backs up horrifying claims and leaves us dismayed and broken. Whether we pick up the shattered pieces or just stare blankly at the floor is entirely up to us.

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Send comments to Jordan about this article to jtrick1@aol.com

Reader Comments


Alex Altberg YC, YU '02.
I want to say that seeing this film put the Israeli side into perspective. It outlines and proves with footage that Israel is clearly a victim and the Palestinians are the apparent agressors. However, I have to say that the film is biased in the sense that you only hear the Israeli voice of how it and its citizens are victimized. There is no Palestinian side heard. The film is subtitled as the search for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let's see the Israeli side and the proof as we have in this film but let's also hear the Palestinian side and then let the viewers decide. Israel is an opressor in the Palestinian view since 1967 however false that pretext may be in the grand scheme of things. It seems that the film comes out to spoon feed the audience about the decision they should be making about whether Israel is justified in this conflict from the Israeli perspective.

It's not a well made film. It misrepresents the objective of a film like this. It is a hard hitting, graphic, and in your face right wing film. Imagine a completely unbiased, unaffiliated person comes in to see the movie (we are already biased - whether you want to admit that or not). They're coming in to see a film about the struggle for peace. Instead they see a form of Israeli jewish brainwashing propaganda. Israel is the victim and the audience is spoon fed that in narration time and time again. The world and the Palestinians have pulled the wool over our eyes. It's a great film for orthodox synagogues to see and strengthen their belief that the Arabs are all evil butchers trying to wipe the jews off the map. The evidence is in the bag. Great, so mail the film to the General Assembly. After seeing this movie it just made me feel sad that it's titled a struggle for peace but is really a well focused sob story trying so hard to win ourselves over. I want people to see that and not just take the film as if what they're seeing is absolute truth.


From Joe Anderson
Jordan,
I just heard of the documentary today, started surfing around, and found your site. I enjoyed your review enough that I really want to see the movie now. Perhaps I am speaking out of turn without having seen the film, but I don't agree with you completely - mostly, but not completely. As an American, I cannot even begin to imagine what life as an Israeli is like, but I have followed the struggles of your country. I must say that the mainstream media coverage in our nation has shifted in the last 20 years from a markedly pro-Israel to a more Arab-sympathetic position, which seems rather odd considering what happened here on September 11, 2001. I go beyond the pablum coverage, and it seems readily apparent to me that your country has no choice but to do what it must to survive. While Plato is a good read, it can lead to an intellectual, almost Hegelian quagmire in that one can question oneself and one's position to such an extent that no position can be taken. This is the plight of the Attorney. Might I suggest The Prince by Machiavelli to help put things in perspective. Your enemy is relentless and ruthless. Don't find it so hard to take a moral position of survival; your enemy has taken a "moral" position of destruction, and he is not questioning his motives. And that does not make you like your enemy. Life is often a "them or us" propositon, despite what naive, gutless intellectuals might say.
Thankyou for an honest and thoughtful review. I pray for your people and your nation. God bless.

From Audra Hochster
Jordan,
I have to say that while I did appreciate the movie, there was definitely a major omission. Rabin's assassination should have been included because it was a major event in the historical picture. While it may not have labeled the Israeli perspective "immaculate," it's important to give all of the pertinent information in a conflict. It's not honest to leave out such history. I am definitely politically to the right, and absolutely feel that Israel should extend it's borders from sea to sea.

If we are going to talk about inner struggles in the PLO and it's people, then we must address the inner struggles of Israel.

The campaign is not trustworthy unless ALL the information is put forth.


From A Reader
Dear Mr. Hiller,
You write in your review of the move Relentless, "Plato has taught me that the name *HonestReporting* reeks of rhetoric. Only individuals who are dishonest would need to represent themselves so blatantly as honest." This misunderstands the mission of Honestreporting.com, which is not to claim that they report more honestly than others, but rather to monitor reporting organizations to ensure that they report honestly and to bring dishonesty to people's attention. HonestReporting is a watchdog, not a media outlet claiming to be honest.
Sincerely,
A Reader.
PS - I wonder what your take is on "thetruth.com"?

From Miriam:
Your article is the first I'm hearing about this documentary. Do you know if I can see it in Israel?

Your reaction to the film- and not knowing what to do with your anger, reminded me of a quote by Golda Meir that goes something like - I can forgive the arabs for hating us but I can't forgive them for making our children hate.
thanks,
Miriam


From Jayson
Hi Jordan,
I read your review on Relentless and was kind of shocked. I figured as BIO is a Jewish web site, you would mirror reviews from other Jewish publications when they write up on themed-themed media releases which is always seen in a positive light.

I appreciated the honesty of your review as I shared a similar reaction after the screening. I thought the documentary was extremely one-sided. I could not imagine this documentary being shown to another demographic besides the young, orthodox, Jewish right. The film-makers made it seem that all Israelis only want peace and nothing else. That is not true: Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir.

I had mixed feelings of the movie, but I did gain some historical facts of the conflict that I was not previously aware of.

Nice review.
-Jayson