Image courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicWritten and directed by Israeli filmmaker, Ari Folman, Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary, based on Folman’s personal experiences as a young soldier fighting in the first Israeli-Lebanon War of the early 1980s. The story begins with present-day Ari sitting in a bar, talking to his old Army friend Boaz about Boaz’s recurring nightmare in which he constantly chased by a menacing pack of dogs. The men then connect Boaz’s dream to a massacre that happened during the war.
At that point, Ari realizes that he himself has no conscious memories about that period in his life. Both perplexed and intrigued by this sudden realization, Ari decides to start tracking down other former Israeli solders, hoping they will be able to help Ari remember what he has forgotten. Over the course of the film, the memory of each interviewed soldier become a catalyst, triggering the next man’s recollections, until Ari eventually discovers that he has collected enough pieces of the puzzle to unlock the part of the war that he himself had repressed.
So, how can Waltz with Bashir be both animated and a documentary at the same time? Unlike A Scanner Darkly, which used rotoscope animation to paint over real video, all the interviews in Waltz were originally shot in a sound studio and cut into a 90 minute film. From there, the film was drawn as a series of story boards, which were then used to create an animated story using a combination of Flash, classic, and 3D animation.
Without question, Waltz with Bashir is an anti-war film. The combination of muted tones, monochromatic colors, and stark chiaroscuro of the animated visual design paint a moody backdrop for the film’s disturbing subject matter. At first, it may seem a little odd to choose animation for a documentary, especially when the director doesn’t use it to glamorize the grizzly images of war like the latest video game; but, there is definitely a method to Folman’s uncharacteristic choice of visual design.
At first the surreal nature of the animation only seems to downplay the atrocity of the film’s subject matter by creating a comfort zone for the audience. But that is exactly what Folman wants it to do, right up to the point where he inserts an unexpected clip of real stock footage (not animated) from the actual massacre. This sudden juxtaposition of fantasy vs. reality that ends as abruptly as it starts makes more of an anti-war statement than any soldier testimony ever could.
Since the film was made by an Israeli filmmaker and everyone interviewed in the film is also a former Israeli soldier, it’s only natural for the film’s spoken language to be Hebrew (with English subtitles). However, there are two instances in the film where English is spoken: 1) in a porno being watched by an Israeli soldier wherein an Arab man is having sex with an American woman (a commentary on American pop culture), and 2) when U.S. soldiers tell the Lebanese militia to “stop the massacre” at the end (a commentary on the current situation in the Middle East).
Could the subtext of these two scenes be read as anti-American messages? Maybe. Maybe not. Like any film, it all depends on who’s doing the interpreting. Every audience member is going to view it with a different perspective than the person sitting next to them. If so, is the message warranted? Again, that’s a matter of individual perception. Personally, I’m not going to judge it on that level, because I can argue it either way. I’m just saying it’s there if you want to see it.
For me personally, the biggest problem I had with Folman’s film wasn’t a question of subtext. Nor, was it the historical accuracy of the event itself. I also wasn’t that bothered by the narcissistic angle of the film’s protagonist, or the fact that two of the soldiers interviewed were played by actors. What drove me nuts more than anything else in Waltz with Bashir was the flawed logic pattern of Folman’s psychology.
At the beginning of the film, one interviewee tells Ari about a psychology experiment that was conducted wherein false memories were created in subjects when others helped them fill in the “missing” memories. Yet, the entire narrative structure of the film is composed of nothing but former soldiers filling in the “missing gaps” of one another’s memories, ironically invalidating every testimony given in the film by the soldiers.
Granted, Folman was probably trying to invalidate these fragmented individual accounts in order to justify the “truth” of his stock footage. But, what he fails to remember is that he also invalidated the perspective of the war journalist’s camera by using it to demonstrate the mental state of disassociation wherein the photographer only captures partial memories on film because the cameraman's lens physically separates him from the “reality” of what he is viewing.
No matter how groundbreaking or aesthetically pleasing I found the film to be, the contradictory messages of its psychology invalidated any effect they might have otherwise had. Ultimately, it’s these very contradictions that keep Folman from finding any real answers to the questions he seeks, making Waltz with Bashir seem more like an impressionistic vision of fragmented memories than a serious journalistic inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of the 1982 Israeli-Lebanon war.
At that point, Ari realizes that he himself has no conscious memories about that period in his life. Both perplexed and intrigued by this sudden realization, Ari decides to start tracking down other former Israeli solders, hoping they will be able to help Ari remember what he has forgotten. Over the course of the film, the memory of each interviewed soldier become a catalyst, triggering the next man’s recollections, until Ari eventually discovers that he has collected enough pieces of the puzzle to unlock the part of the war that he himself had repressed.
So, how can Waltz with Bashir be both animated and a documentary at the same time? Unlike A Scanner Darkly, which used rotoscope animation to paint over real video, all the interviews in Waltz were originally shot in a sound studio and cut into a 90 minute film. From there, the film was drawn as a series of story boards, which were then used to create an animated story using a combination of Flash, classic, and 3D animation.
Without question, Waltz with Bashir is an anti-war film. The combination of muted tones, monochromatic colors, and stark chiaroscuro of the animated visual design paint a moody backdrop for the film’s disturbing subject matter. At first, it may seem a little odd to choose animation for a documentary, especially when the director doesn’t use it to glamorize the grizzly images of war like the latest video game; but, there is definitely a method to Folman’s uncharacteristic choice of visual design.
At first the surreal nature of the animation only seems to downplay the atrocity of the film’s subject matter by creating a comfort zone for the audience. But that is exactly what Folman wants it to do, right up to the point where he inserts an unexpected clip of real stock footage (not animated) from the actual massacre. This sudden juxtaposition of fantasy vs. reality that ends as abruptly as it starts makes more of an anti-war statement than any soldier testimony ever could.
Since the film was made by an Israeli filmmaker and everyone interviewed in the film is also a former Israeli soldier, it’s only natural for the film’s spoken language to be Hebrew (with English subtitles). However, there are two instances in the film where English is spoken: 1) in a porno being watched by an Israeli soldier wherein an Arab man is having sex with an American woman (a commentary on American pop culture), and 2) when U.S. soldiers tell the Lebanese militia to “stop the massacre” at the end (a commentary on the current situation in the Middle East).
Could the subtext of these two scenes be read as anti-American messages? Maybe. Maybe not. Like any film, it all depends on who’s doing the interpreting. Every audience member is going to view it with a different perspective than the person sitting next to them. If so, is the message warranted? Again, that’s a matter of individual perception. Personally, I’m not going to judge it on that level, because I can argue it either way. I’m just saying it’s there if you want to see it.
For me personally, the biggest problem I had with Folman’s film wasn’t a question of subtext. Nor, was it the historical accuracy of the event itself. I also wasn’t that bothered by the narcissistic angle of the film’s protagonist, or the fact that two of the soldiers interviewed were played by actors. What drove me nuts more than anything else in Waltz with Bashir was the flawed logic pattern of Folman’s psychology.
At the beginning of the film, one interviewee tells Ari about a psychology experiment that was conducted wherein false memories were created in subjects when others helped them fill in the “missing” memories. Yet, the entire narrative structure of the film is composed of nothing but former soldiers filling in the “missing gaps” of one another’s memories, ironically invalidating every testimony given in the film by the soldiers.
Granted, Folman was probably trying to invalidate these fragmented individual accounts in order to justify the “truth” of his stock footage. But, what he fails to remember is that he also invalidated the perspective of the war journalist’s camera by using it to demonstrate the mental state of disassociation wherein the photographer only captures partial memories on film because the cameraman's lens physically separates him from the “reality” of what he is viewing.
No matter how groundbreaking or aesthetically pleasing I found the film to be, the contradictory messages of its psychology invalidated any effect they might have otherwise had. Ultimately, it’s these very contradictions that keep Folman from finding any real answers to the questions he seeks, making Waltz with Bashir seem more like an impressionistic vision of fragmented memories than a serious journalistic inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of the 1982 Israeli-Lebanon war.
© Left From Hollywood 1/23/2009
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