Customer Reviews

Waltz With Bashir

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

"Waltz With Bashir" is one of the great recent examples of how animation can be used not just as a tool for children's entertainment, but as a serious film medium that can have a powerful impact. It is unashamed at being an anti-war film, this is because the director lived and survived the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel, he participated in it and had things to say through his memories and talent. Some on here are going nuts by bashing the film as "anti-Israel," shocked at a movie that would present a realistic, honest portrait of a certain political fantasy they want to keep alive as do most statist devotees. But "Waltz With Bashir" is not just about Israel, it is about war in general, about the experience of war and the brutal reality of violence. As an animated movie, it has deeper, more intelligent things to say than typical gung ho works like "Band Of Brothers" or even the recent "The Hurt Locker."

The film chronicles director Ari Folman's search for his memories of the Lebanon War and more specifically, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, a brutal massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Nazi-inspired Christian Phalange, which at the time was supported by Israel considering the Phalange's leader, Bashir Gemayal, was a potential puppet ruler the Israelis sought to install (for a detailed account of the whole war and the assassination of Bashir Gemayal, read Robert Fisk's brilliant book "Pity The Nation: The Abduction Of Lebanon"). Folman revists old army buddies to recount the war and his own memories of the night Israeli troops fired flares into the sky and stood by as the Phalange carried out is butchery.

This is not the sort of material one would immediately think of as cartoon material, but in the hands of Folman the movie is a masterpiece of the animation medium. The images are haunting and sometimes breathtaking in their depth and scope. Like the best films, the images sometimes say and express profound ideas not found in just the dialogue or plot. The beautiful music by Max Richter helps enhance the film's hypnotic power. Folman's story brilliantly travels from documentary to psychological landscapes, from questions of history and politics to topics of psychology and how memories work and transform themselves. Folman also manages to tell very human stories without resorting to holding big banners in our faces. The politics and other topics all come with a real sense of humanity.

One of the great achievements of "Waltz With Bashir" is how it uses its medium to explore the subject of war. There are moments as surreal as "Apocalypse Now" and as raw and honest as Oliver Stone's "Platoon." Folman is making big statements, but he makes them by simply sharing what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed during the invasion of Lebanon. The visions of war and death can sometimes be terrifying in their clarity. Like the great Israeli writers Uri Avnery and Gideon Levy, Folman doesn't march in step with those who only wish to glorify the Israeli state and every single one of its military operations, he puts a mirror to the reality of the violence and terror of war because no matter how much some try to paint over them with heroism, wars usually spiral into orgies of human corruption and criminal mayhem. In the era of Gaza and Afghanistan, "Waltz With Bashir" has very relevant things to say about the realities of occupation, the politics of war states and the human toll they impose on general populations. The ending of the movie is an especially shattering experience that brings the point home.

"Waltz With Bashir" asks tough questions, which is more than can be said about typical movies these days. It challenges the viewer, this is no doubt what disturbs the die hard Israel supporters on here who immediately respond to the movies with a whole scroll of "facts" or "historical notes" instead of discussing what Folman has to say, or even the accuracy of what Folman shows (and it is accurate even when one looks at Israeli scholarship on the issue). This is an important war film, because it is actually about war itself, it isn't just trying to tell a war story. Folman has made a work of truth and conscience, it will stand the test of time.

Memory is a fickle day dream, and Ari Folman brings it to life as its own character in his animated attempt to document and process his repressed memories of his role in the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres during the 1982 Lebanese War. Although one-sided in its historic depiction, Folman's personal story of working back through the holes in his psyche is gripping. The accounts of his friends as they fill in his experience are as triggering for viewers as Folman. Somewhat intense and sensually disturbing, the graphic artistry is compelling and deceptively simplistic. As memory serves detachment, the quality of animating such charged material creates a layer of psychological comfort for watching horrific events, at least until their reality becomes undeniable. This is not a film for young viewers, and one that older viewers should approach carefully.

The Bottom Line:

An "animated documentary" which moves along in a way that most docs don't, Waltz with Bashir concerns itself with different perspectives on Israel's controversial 1982 war with Lebanon and delivers a load of fascinating material in addition to some beautiful images; the Academy may have passed over Folman's impressive film, but that doesn't mean you should.

3.5/4

This movie is one of the best accounts of the trauma that affects young men -- boys really -- sent to fight wars which deeply affects them decades after.

The war in question is the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon which quickly went bad and ended up with the Israelis providing a security perimeter for Christina Falangists to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla where they massacred several hundred civilians.

The Falangists were avenging the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel, who gives his name to the movie's title. The Israelis ought to have know their Christian allies were bent on revenge. Moreover, on the night of the massacre, there were numerous reports trickling out of the camps that atrocities were taking place -- but no-one acted on them. The Israelis only stopped the killing the next morning.

Years later, through interviews with Israeli soldiers who took part in the war and psychologists, this animated movie examines the deep guilt and trauma many still feel. The animation is beautifully done -- some scenes are truly lyrical -- and it somehow allows the characters to become "everyman." We see young, poorly trained kids panic under fire and lash out by firing indiscriminately themselves killing civilians. We see a 12-year-old Palestinian kid wielding a rocket-propelled grenade, determined to kill and ending up himself being killed. The opening scene with ravening, yellow-eyes wolves bounding through the streets of Tel Aviv to howl under the balcony of one ex-soldiers is particularly striking.

These kind of scenes could apply to any war or insurgency and parallels between this conflict and the current U.S. struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear and urgent. Yet there is a special Israeli angle. Some of these soldiers were the children of Holocaust survivors, making the moral failures of this war even more traumatic.

Making this movie was an act of courage and honesty and we should honor the filmakers and listen to their message.

I think this is a movie that everyone should watch. As such, I force people I know to borrow it from me all the time. I saw it when it was new, but knew I had to own it. I'm very glad that I bought it and think it's a unique film worth watching, even if it doesn't leave the viewer with warm and fuzzy feelings.

Had anyone suggested that animation could explore the complexities of memory, i would have scoffed. This film goes far beyond memory as it explores not just the horrors of war but the long-term consequences of war on a soldier's psyche. The opening dream scene of the vicious pack of dogs running through the streets is as frightening as only a recurring nightmare can be and its animation makes it brutally vivid. This is a film about the innocence of young soldiers and the repressed memories of one, now older, attempting to piece together his participation in Israel's earlier attack on Lebanon. It's a film that explores the terrible cost of war on the israeli soldiers involved in the attack but also, and most powerful, the terrible violence inflicted on the inhabitants of the Palestinian camps in Beirut as Israeli troops watched from the city's rooftops nearby. Especially telling was the director's decision to forgo animation at the end, letting the final desperate blood-soaked footage speak for itself. A brilliant and important work of art that transcends any archived historical document.

Waltz with Bashir - film review.

This film carries itself on two levels, as entertainment, and as a documentary.

As far as the documentary goes, towards the end we get the final perspective of just what the Lebanon war was like. Eventually, Israeli soldiers are plainly described [by the narrator] as young drafted Nazis, marching into war as ordered--not to be mistaken for the murderous S.S. troopers, whose appearance is played by the Lebanese Christian militia (The Phalangists)--who commit the massacres against the Palestinian refugees. Yet it's the Israelis who barely react to their own consciences when they know what's wrong is wrong.

As an animated movie, it's a fantastic visual journey of vicious imagery and a puzzle that strategically unwinds to reveal itself. This is a story told through non-linear flashbacks and dreams sequences. Towards the end, the script seems to run out of steam and is replaced by pure documentary as the last parts of the story are told through witness interviews.

Waltz with Bashir is artful, sad, provocative and extremely relevant.

Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008), a unique combination of Animation/Documentary/Biography/ Drama/ War is not easy to watch and almost impossible to forget. It is original and unusual but in its core it reminded me of a film from many years ago that explored persistence of memory which can't be stopped or avoided - "Muriel" (1963) directed by Alain Resnais. One of "Muriel" characters is a former soldier who was hunted by the memories of the war in Algiers and the local girl tortured and killed by the French soldiers. As in Muriel, the main theme of the Israeli film is reality vs. memory of it. Can we always trust ourselves with what we remember? Does our memory reflect the events the way they really happened or our vision of them is altered as time passes and new realities inevitably enter our lives? Ari Folman and his team use an innovative technique to tell the harrowing story. It is the first time, a film-maker blends documentary and animation, history and fiction to create such powerful, tragic yet beautiful film which I simply can't stop thinking about. By making himself a character of the film who tried to understand why he has no recollections of the events he had been a participant in some and an eyewitness to the others, and gradually unveiling the long hidden unbearable truth, it seems Folman made the film as a metaphor for the whole country trying to block from memory a very dark, difficult, controversial and shameful page in its history that is known as The Sabra and Shatila massacre. It was carried out between September 16 and 18, 1982 by the Lebanese Forces Christian militia group, following the assassination of Phalangist leader and president-elect Bashir Gemayel. It is not the purpose of this short review to comment on the Sabra and Shatila massacre. I just want to point out that the information available from the different Internet sources is not always complete. A very important fact has been omitted from Wikipedia that "Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter two refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition. When Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians." ([...])


This is a very sad and powerful movie that left a lasting impression on me but I understand that not all viewers feel the same way. My husband kept saying, "So what? What new did they say? The War, any war is dirty, unglamorous and destroying for every side involved. Thousands of innocent die tragically. The war brings shame and guilt, remorse and nightmares to the soldiers who follow orders." I agree with him but I understand why the director Ari Folman who is a Veteran of the First Lebanon War has made the film and what he tried to achieve. For almost 27 years, the debates have never stopped regarding the responsibility of Israeli military for the massacre because the Sabra and Shatila camps had been under the control of The Israeli Defense Force (IDF). By the words of Folman, his goal was not naming the guilty parties but trying to understand what is going on with these who fought as the Israeli soldiers during the First Lebanon War in Beirut and saw the results of horrors with their own eyes. Explaining why he chose to make the film as a documentary in the animated format, Ari said that animation had given him the necessary freedom in his creative process and the chance to blend the facts of reality with the perceptions, feelings and deeply hidden images in the memories of the retired soldiers- his friends and comrades whose recollections of these few days in September of 1982 as well as his own made the film possible.


The technique which is actually a combination of Adobe Flash cutouts and classic animation has produced simple, gripping and fascinating images. The atmosphere is surreal to which the dark disturbing color scheme appropriately contributes. The visual originality and innovation are accompanied by sorrowful haunting soundtrack and the songs written for the film that add to the deep emotional impact the movie made on me.

This is what real war feels like. Confusing. Shameful. As a soldier in the Iraq war, I felt like the machine had been started by the powers that be. Once the machine is started, it is left unmonitored to do as much damage as possible. It doesn't matter when it stops or where or who it destroys in the process. It is war. You always hear that war is bad. I wish that meant something. Fact is, we will never learn. But there are some of us, Ari Folman included, that know the truth. And we will not be able to smile and go along with things the next time someone decides we need to start the machine.

This animation movie is nor more neither less a reconstruction from both sides of the conflict of the horrid massacre of Sabra and Shatila. Recreated at first on memories and then by diverse protagonists who somehow in a way or another participated in these events.

Ari Folman directed this self-confessional, bold and courageous film nominated as Best Foreign Film in 2008.