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Waltz with Bashir (2008) is a one-of-a-kind movie. Visually, it's half way between a cartoon and Sin City. It's one of the most awe-inspiring animated films I've ever seen: the action scenes are incredibly well done and captivating, while the dream sequences look beautiful. Faces will feel very awkward at first, as they are not "properly" shaded, and the animation is more fluid than what you may be used to (animation is actually 30 frames/sec, unlike most cartoons which use a framerate almost half of that). The backgrounds look amazingly life-like, and the lighting is superb. Although the plot wasn't very captivating by itself, and some passages are rather slow (seeing someone talk about war for 5 minutes, even if it's animated, gets irritating), the historical sections seem accurate and teach a whole lot about the events of 1982. For this reason the film looses half a star: some parts are just plain boring. The movie by itself felt very polished, with what I can only guess is a lot of attention to details. Remember, this is an animated documentary about war, so do not watch this movie expecting to have fun. Some scenes are rather brutal for a cartoon, and some have animated porn. For those two reasons I would not recommend taking a girlfriend or significant other to watch this movie (without properly warning them beforehand, anyways). As a final comment, I think the movie could have done without the last 5 minutes... this won't make sense unless you've seen the movie until the end. For those last 5 minutes alone this film looses another half star. 4/5
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Jul 29, 2008 13:17
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 13:28 |
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“Waltz with Bashir” examines one of the darkest moments of the 1982 Israeli intervention in Lebanon, the Sabra and Shatila massacre. A big story at the time and largely forgotten in the States since then, the massacre involved the killing of thousands of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Phalangist militiamen with both tacit and direct support from the Israeli Defense Forces, then under the leadership of Ariel Sharon. Men, women and children were indiscriminately murdered by the Christian Phalangists in retaliation for the assassination of their leader, Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel, while the IDF watched on from periphery of the refugee camp. A lot of soldiers knew that something was going on—some even witnessed the shooting of civilians and noted that the Phalangists had carved crosses into the chests of some of the Palestinians—but no one did anything. Not because they were evil necessarily, but because most people are complacent and helpless before directives and orders. “Waltz with Bashir” is an animated documentary that attempts to get to the heart of the matter through the indirect route of subjective experience, the distorted memories and unreliable feelings of Israeli veterans. The director Ari Folman was at Sabra and Shatila, firing off flares to light the camp at night while the Phalangist militiamen carried out their revenge. After talking to a friend about the war, he begins to have flashbacks and hallucinations, and decides to investigate his own role in the massacre. The film is in many ways an exploration of a troubled conscience. When Folman discusses his own experience, he does so with detached bemusement tinged with horror. He was only nineteen at the time of the war and found the experience surreal. He talks about returning to Israel on leave, and notes that unlike previous Israeli wars, life on the home front was left largely unchanged. Kids hung out in new wave clubs and discos, drinking and partying. During these scenes, I thought about soldiers returning to the States from Afghanistan and Iraq with PTSD. What goes through their heads when they see life going on as always, as though we were at peace, as though everything they have been through never happened? Folman interviews people who were also present at the massacre, as well as a few veterans who had served elsewhere in the war. All of them are fascinating subjects—one of them made a fortune in the Netherlands serving falafel, another is a martial artist who promotes the benefits of patchouli on the front (your fellow soldiers will know where you’re standing in the dark), and yet another swam out to sea after his entire tank squad was wiped out in a single attack. Between these stories, we hear the surreal Israeli rock anthems of the time, one of them crassly celebrating the bombing of Beirut. Animation proves to be a surprisingly useful medium for this approach. First, it allows Folman to disguise his subjects, which invites them to open up more, admit to thoughts and feelings they might have refused to talk about on camera. Second, it allows him to enter into their personal experiences, recreating real events that would have been too expensive to replicate with live action. He can also enter their dreams and hallucinations. Some involve sexual fantasy, others death, as when a friend recounts a dream where he’s pursued by all the watchdogs he killed during the war. Third, and most importantly, the animation is used as a distancing device. By using stylized visuals, Folman is able to expose the audience to subject matter that might be too harsh, even revolting. The animation shields us from the reality of the depicted events, which seems like a cop out until you realize how lyrical, wrenching and affecting the result is. Talking heads and gory photographs would have a certain naked appeal, but here the accessibility and urgency hook us, making the unthinkable palatable, until the end when suddenly we’re faced with images of the real victims. Apart from the power of its visual storytelling, “Waltz with Bashir” is effective because it eschews easy answers in favor of an exploration of complicity and the nature of evil. What do you do when your own commanding officer tells you to do nothing? Is the soldier responsible? Is the commanding officer? How about the Israeli government? It’s easy to point fingers now, but deep inside a culture of complacency, individuals are silenced and the tribe takes over. Somehow, almost every subject in the film was there and saw bits and pieces, but none of them take direct responsibility. The guilt is there, but not the admission. The massacre represents a failure of leadership and moral responsibility on every level, but it’s difficult to assign blame evenly. Simply speaking up is not enough, and can even be dangerous in the middle of a war. My own opinion is that Israeli soldiers shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but this doesn’t change the fact that they were. One interviewee draws a politically perilous but essential comparison to Holocaust imagery, particularly from the Warsaw ghetto, when talking about watching Palestinians paraded around by the Philangist militiamen. He’s not comparing the war to the Holocaust, only the event itself, Christian marauders killing civilians without fear of consequence. “Waltz with Bashir” throws out the geopolitical contexts, the maps, the ideological experts, the stale talking heads, and approaches the horrors of war and ethnic violence through the prism of personal experience, in a way that is beautiful, humane, entertaining, thoughtful, frequently profound and finally devastating. This is a film that hurts. “Waltz with Bashir” was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars and should have won, but the Academy displayed their usual cowardice when it comes to challenging films. I’m sure few of the voters even bothered watching it. Dealing with hard truths and psychological nuance in a responsible manner, especially with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, isn’t really Hollywood’s forte. 5/5
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Mar 3, 2009 04:27
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This is a good film if a bit heavy handed. Like BranceMulligan commented, The animated art works surprisingly well with the source material and adds another dimension to the film wherein the portrayal of events manages to seemingly correctly reproduce the subjective perception of events of the interviewed characters. The stories are all interesting and the movie and people are mostly level headed and lacking of patriotic and moral pretentse which gives the movie an overall tragic and humanitarian tone. Worth watching. 4/5
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Apr 11, 2009 00:45
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