“Maybe it is better you don’t understand”. about “Letter to a pig” by Tal Kantor
“Letter to a Pig,” a short film by Tal Kantor, has arrived online ahead of the decision on the Oscar nominees for the Best Animated Short Film category for 2023–4.
This rare film, produced by The Hive production house (Amit Gitzelter), which also brought us Uri Lotan’s “Black Slide” a year prior, both films being exceptional in quality, won the Ophir Award for Best Short Film. It is the first animated film to be nominated in this category and certainly the first to win, rightfully so.
The film starts with a simple encounter between bored Israeli high school students and a Holocaust survivor recounting his survival story. The generation gap becomes a palpable rift, drawing in one of the students, who embarks on a profound journey within Israel, bridging the gap between contemporary Israel and the story of a Jewish child who escaped the horrors of the Holocaust. In recent months, it seems that this gap has slightly closed. Holocaust survivors who hear the stories of children hiding from Hamas terrorists on October 2023 reencounter their trauma as if not much has changed. Therefore, it is intriguing to watch the film from this current perspective.
In the subsequent post: Impressive behind-the-scenes processes of the film that, in my opinion, make it one of the most valuable short films produced in the country. Additionally, my thoughts on the film in light of the drastically different and similar final film compared to Tal’s initial vision.
Available on VOD here:
The Graduation Film by Tal from Bezalel academy: ‘In Other Words’”:
“Good thing you won’t understand!”
A letter to future generations.
The number of Holocaust survivors among us who are capable of telling their story in the first person is gradually diminishing. This generation, which initially remained silent and later spoke, documented, and conveyed the horrors of the Holocaust only to those willing to listen, allows us to feel the true magnitude of an incomprehensible tragedy. A Holocaust that is difficult to contain in its intensity, encompassing both its immense horror and the almost technical details, as well as the personal horrors it contained.
“A Letter to a Pig” is also a letter to future generations. It’s not surprising that when stories about the pig are told, children make pig-like sounds. In their apathy and mockery, there are quite a few pig-like qualities of a beast that revels in the contemporary circus that, until October 23, has not experienced anti-Semitism devoid of compromise, hatred, violence, and existential fear, as Jews experienced in the Diaspora.
The film, directed realistically, navigates through realms of imagination where the majority of the journey of the heroine, situated between her bored friends and the elderly Holocaust survivor, takes place. She exists in between worlds. She is part of the group, but she also pays attention to nuances, sharp voices in her keen ears, and in her sensitivity feels the cynicism and the gap between the terrible story and how her friends react when the story itself seeks to be told but remains incomprehensible. Because if the Holocaust is understood, it can also be contained. The escape of the heroine under the table resonates already at this stage with the escape of the survivor to the pig’s den. She escapes from everything, from horror and cynicism, but is drawn to both. Perhaps because it is an inevitable fate to be a character and a number and a critic at the same time.
During the walk in the forest, the Jewish children, initially Zionist pioneers, gradually transform into determined military youth. Group walking, rhythmic pace with some tension that almost hints at conscripted youth in rebellious distress. I won’t delve into criticism of Zionism versus the diaspora, as seen in the disdain for the Mizrahim and Holocaust survivors, “Yehudonim” who hid instead of defending themselves. However, it’s worth mentioning the role reversal that David Grossman portrayed in “Mimic,” where the Zionist child discovers the Nazi creature within him, out of hatred for Jews who don’t look like him. Jews who don’t conform to the new Jewish image, independent, combative, beautifully blond and titled.
As the scene progresses and becomes a confusion between documentation, reenactment, and processing, the roles are exchanged. The children turn into Nazis, and the survivor becomes a pig. Their screams are not understood, and they seek to avenge him… for what? For reminding them who they are? For what they are trying to forget? For their identity? For the knowledge that someone in the world hates them just because of the Jewish hump that doesn’t even belong to them? The thoughts that anti-Semitism was a coat if only we were… if only we were not such “Jews” employ us even today. What haven’t we done to be part of them? If water is poured on us, aren’t we wet? If we take off the kippah, talk English, and watch Netflix, aren’t all these enough for you to finally accept us? I think it’s among other things what motivates the frustration and revenge of the youth.
But really, to understand the pig and the end of the film, I need to go back to Tal’s final film: “In Other Words” (mentioned above).
As part of the deconstruction of sanctity, Tal mentioned in an interview that the pig’s hug is a tribute to the Madonna paintings holding her son Jesus, and the cables holding the pig are like phylacteries. This reminded me of a painting by my wife, Renana Salmon, in the past that also tried to dismantle the Christian-Jewish piety cradle into a swing and digest this thing that is so un-Jewish but so alive.
Making of:
“I’m not the girl hiding from the Cossacks!”
Helen Mirren in the role of Golda Meir on Yom Kippur in a scene that seems as if taken from the last year, echoing the outcry, “Not again!”
