From the DVD Shelf: Josh Reviews Waltz With Bashir

I saw a lot of films in 2008 — but, of course, there were many that I wanted to see but just didn’t get to.  (I listed several when I compiled my list of the Best Movies of 2008.)  Of the films that I missed, the one I was most bummed about was Waltz With Bashir.

For almost a year now I’ve been hearing and reading about what a success this film is.  Well, last month I finally had an opportunity to watch Ari Folman’s magnificent “animated documentary” (as he refers to the film on the DVD’s special features).  It is a beautiful, haunting, truly unique film.

A meeting at a bar with one of his former comrades from the Israeli army prompts Mr. Folman to realize that he has no memories of his time fighting in the Lebanon War of 1982.  Despite that lack of concrete memories, he finds himself increasingly haunted by a bizarre image that he dreams about — of him, and several other Israeli soldiers, emerging naked from the water, watching flares illuminate a deserted Lebanese city block.  Trying to determine the meaning of that image, and to sort out exactly where he was and what he did during the war, Mr. Folman travels around Israel, and beyond, meeting up with several surviving comrades from the war and listening to their stories.

The film is structured around these interviews/conversations.  (These are almost all real interviews with real people, who voice themselves — with just two exceptions, according to the DVD features — in the film.)  Why then, you might be wondering, is the project animated?  Why didn’t Mr. Folman simply film and then edit together these interviews the way most documentarians do?  Within the answer to that question lies the film’s surprising power.  Folman and his team use animation as a way to recreate, before our eyes, what the interview subjects are describing, whether that be their best recollection of events that they lived through, or the dreams that they’ve had in the years since.

While certainly there is an attempt, on Mr. Folman’s part, to educate himself (and his audience) about the events of the Lebanese War — and, specifically, the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Phalangist fighters — there is so much more going on in this film than just a recreation of those events.  Waltz With Bashir represents a soldier’s attempt to come to grips with actions that he might have taken — or allowed others to take — or even just witnessed — during war-time.  As such, this could be a film about almost any conflict.  Yes, over the course of the film, Mr. Folman is investigating the specifics of the fighting in Lebanon in 1982, but the issues that investigation uncovers — in what can happen during what the military calls “the fog of war,” and in how those involved live their lives in the years that follow — is universal.

The film also investigates — and plays with — the delicate balance between memory and reality.  Early on, one of Mr. Folman’s friends (Professor Ori Sivan — click here to read an interesting interview with him conducted by one of my colleagues, Howard Blas) points out that there was an experiment done where people were shown faked photographs of themselves as a child at a fair that they never visited.  A vast majority of the subjects claimed to be able to recall details of that happy childhood moment, despite the fact that it never happened.  Memory is a tricky thing, constantly in motion.  As Mr. Folman talks with other Israeli soldiers, it is fascinating to learn the degree to which they can or cannot recall the events that they were involved with, and the images that stick out in their memory.  As noted above, it is here where the decision to animate this project pays off.  In a series of astoundingly moving vignettes, we viewers are able to witness these soldiers’ dreams, recollections, and memories brought to vivid life.

The entire animation team (headed by Director of Animation Yoni Goodman and Art Director David Polonsky) deserves enormous credit for the achievement of this film.  Clearly this was a project done under an enormously restrictive budget, and a hard-core animation fan can see the ways they saved time and money (by simplifying the movements of the characters, by repeating some movements, by limiting the motion of characters in the background of an image to focus on the animation of the character(s) in the foreground, etc. etc.).  But that hardly matters.  The animation — the characters, the settings, everything — is beautifully designed.  Computer-enhanced coloring and effects create gorgeous imagery out of threatening storm-clouds or the motion of a dark sea.  The color-design is masterful, with numerous monochromatic sequences where the color choice powerfully establishes the mood the filmmakers were striving for.  The result is imagery that is lush and gorgeous, creating a powerful contrast with the events of war that the former soldiers are recollecting.

Furthermore, and most importantly, animation doesn’t differentiate its depiction of events that surely did happen the way the soldiers remember (such as a tank ride into a Lebanese town that turns deadly) and what they dream about (such as the gripping opening sequence of dogs terrorizing a city square, or one soldier’s dream of a gigantic woman swimming up to his boat and carrying him away).  Both are animated in the same style, and look just as “real” to the viewer.  This makes literal one of the film’s major points of focus — that hazy, gray area between memory and reality.  That is an effect that could only be achieved in animation.

Waltz with Bashir is filled with powerful imagery and complex ideas.  It is a film with a lot to say, that leaves its audience with a lot to think about.  It achieves all that it sets out to achieve, and more.  It’s a powerful film about the realities of war, one that masterfully harnesses the possibilities that cinema, and animation, provide.  Check it out, if you haven’t yet had the opportunity.