At a Venice Film Festival that is rarely affected by the rise of extremes, both on and off screen, it is not in vain to turn to a specialist in the matter. Veteran of the Yom Kippur War (1973), an architect by training, author, at 73 years of age, of a work that combines documentary, fiction, theatre and visual arts in the same whirlwind of questions, Amos Gitaï presents, out of competition, Why war? during the festival which ends on September 7.
With this film essay, freely adapted from Why war?the 1933 pamphlet that brings together the letters exchanged between physicist Albert Einstein and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in 1932, the Israeli filmmaker continues to believe in the powers of art and dialectics, while talking about World.
When did you discover the correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud?
During my PhD in architecture, in Berkeley, United States [au milieu des années 1970]. Then I put it aside for a long time, until I was hospitalized in January: I found a copy of the book that belonged to my mother and I felt the need to adapt it. The savagery of October 7 [2023] – the rapes, the kidnappings… – it was a big shock.
I often think of Vivian Silver, burned alive in her home in Kibbutz Beeri by Hamas. This 74-year-old woman helped Gazan children receive treatment in Israeli hospitals… Then the nightmarish destruction of Gaza, the tens of thousands of victims, the false belief of Netanyahu and his fanatical government that they can achieve everything by force… All of this pushed me to realize Why war?. I had never lived through such a destructive time, not even during the Yom Kippur War. However, since my first film, home [1980]I strive to create spaces for dialogue, both in film and in theatre.
What is the content of this dialogue?
In 1932, Albert Einstein, on the initiative of the League of Nations, asked Sigmund Freud a question: why do these intelligent animals called humans need to wage war? Why can’t they find solutions without killing? His position is almost Marxist, denouncing the military industry and big capital.
Freud responds by plumbing the depths of the human soul, torn between two contradictory impulses: to preserve and to destroy, Eros and Thanatos… At first he remains optimistic about the power of culture to act against war. Then he changes his mind, to the point of saying that it can do nothing, or almost nothing.
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