Published: 18 October 2016
Last updated: 4 March 2024
To the End of the Land (2008) is a novel about the emotional strains that family members of soldiers experience when their loved ones are deployed into combat. The main character, Ora, is a woman who engages in frantic magical thinking to try to keep her son alive. Ora decides that if she goes for a long walk in Galilee with her son's father, if she is not present to hear "notifiers" tell her of his death, she will prevent it. Grossman started writing the book three years before Uri’s death, and completed it two years after. It has won critical acclaim and numerous awards, and was on President Obama’s reading list.
Born in Jerusalem, Grossman’s interest in literature was nurtured by his father, who started as a bus driver but then became a librarian. His books have been translated from Hebrew into more than 30 languages.
Grossman is an outspoken peace activist. His first novel, The Smile of the Lamb (1983), is an important examination of the West Bank occupation.
Grossman hasn’t always written on political subjects. He is also renowned for his many books for children and young adults. The Itamar series is dedicated to, and based on, Grossman’s son Uri.
When Uri Grossman was 17, he invented the character Fieldmarshal Archibald Lomumba, a cruel and crazy dictator king. Shortly before Uri joined the army, David Grossman interviewed him in character as The Fieldmarshal. Ten years after Uri’s death, the interview notes have been turned into a short, bitter-comic film, The Fieldmarshal (2016), created by Noam Meshulam and Noam Nadav. It was released as part of the Beit Avi Chai commemorative project - “A Face. The Day. A Memorial“. In the film, David Grossman plays himself and interviews his animated character son, who takes on the personality of The Fieldmarshal. The film brings to life Uri’s clever and comic creation, but also sends a strong message about the vicious cycle of bloodshed.
The Jewish Independent asked Noam Meshulam, one of the directors, about the role of animation in this film and in films generally. He answered: “Unlike regular filming technique, animation has the ability to build a new world and a new language from scratch. The symbolic language of animation helps the viewer to digest hard content while still evoking an emotional attachment to the material. In The Fieldmarshal we first created Uri’s character. Later on we dealt with the Fieldmarshal character and, since it was animation, it was easier to handle comic-violent scenes like decapitation. The audience experiences bloody decapitation as less shocking when it’s animated. I think that it was also easier for the family to show the content of the stories in a graphic way. Using animation enabled us to revive Uri’s material in a clean and pure way, untrammelled by the complexity of real life - this is the power of art.”
You can WATCH The Fieldmarshal here [11:02] (for English subtitles, press the CC button or select English under Settings)
This The Jewish Independent article may be republished if acknowledged thus: ‘Reprinted with permission from www.thejewishindependent.com.au ’
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