SKIES OF LEBANON: A Cute and Watchable War-Romance

A lot of the better works of art to come out of Asia and many of the difficult historical events that have taken place there have been animated. It’s an interesting choice to take a medium that has generally been considered, in the West at least, as one for children, to depict the world of adults and the heartbreak and catastrophe it causes. From Isao Takahata’s masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies (1988) to Marjane Satrapi’s stunning graphic novel Persepolis (2007) to Ari Folman’s innovative animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008) and most recently Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee (2021), the drawn sketches and portraits of war and revolution have been just as affecting forms of communicating tragedy as live-action cinema. The worlds of animation and live-action collide in the eclectic tapestries of Chloé Mazlo’s Skies of Lebanon.

 In Times of Romance and War

Starring Alba Rorwacher, sister of famed Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, as the main character Alice, the film depicts a woman’s journey to Lebanon and her subsequent romance and marriage with a Lebanese astrophysicist named Joseph (Wajdi Mouawad) which comes under strife during the Lebanese Civil War. The film is partially based on a recounting of Mazlo’s grandmother who lived through the war, the movie draws a charming if sometimes twee portrayal of a secluded and generally peaceful life of a family and romance that is affected by “the real world” knocking on their door. The movie understands the human impulse of resisting believing in the worst and it brings the war to the front steps of Alice’s home very slowly. It first comes through radio broadcasts of civil unrest, then news reports of shootings, then smoke billowing over the horizon through the window of Alice’s home. The creeping sensations of fear and death are slow to kick in and the movie’s general eclectic whimsical demeanor often clashes with what is a national tragedy.

Sometimes too Cute

Mazlo uses stop-motion animations, split screens, animated drawings, and even the scenes with actual actors often have painted backdrops of the city and community giving the film a quaint stage-play like look. The often-seen comparisons to Wes Anderson, whose warm pastel color-pallet closely resembles Skies of Lebanon, are certainly apt for Mazlo’s film but I would also throw in Nobuhiko Obayashi and Jean-Pierre Jeunet as stylistic and conceptual counterparts. In the case of Obayashi, specifically but not limited to Labyrinth of Cinema (2020), the purposeful fakery of the scenes curated to be a stirring contrast to the violence and trauma depicted within them is the source of emotion. Similarly in Skies of Lebanon, we see a life burgeoning within the fakery of cinema, but it still rings as a romantic and idealistic dream to us, which is then sufficiently dashed by the onslaught of national politics. Many sequences depicting violence come under symbolic theatrics in the film and if there’s any serious criticism I have about the movie it’s that it deals too much with symbolism.

What I mean by this is, that the film’s eclectic charm often wades into the territory of being too cute in representing its feelings. A few times especially early on, it substitutes human interaction and genuine character development with a symbolic gesture or visual gimmick – one prime example is when Alice decides she’s severing her ties with her parents in Switzerland and literally cuts a tree root attached to her shoe. In another instance, when Alice falls in love with Joseph, an animation of her heart turns from ice-cold blue to red. These are nice and cute indicators but there is a rush to them that seems to skimp over creating tangible and weighted connections between characters. It’s only when the film shifts to the Civil War that we start to get a bit of interplay of drama and learn about what the characters feel and their genuine reactions to each other and the outside world.

Conclusion:

These small gripes aside, Mazlo’s film is endearing and a unique portrait of a national history that isn’t often seen in cinema. It depicts the ways in which war affects personal relationships and safety well and it also understands the ways in which people both ignorantly try to deny the realities of war while also, in its inevitability, trying to find some semblance of happiness in the connections with those around them. Alba Rohrwacher gives a delightful performance that reminds me of Marie-Laure Dougnac in Delicatessen (1991). Mazlo’s mixing of animated and live-action creates a dream world that is shaken by the real world and the result is both striking and immensely watchable.  

Skies of Lebanon was released in U.S theaters on July 22, 2022

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