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18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Kind of Documentary, February 23, 2009
"Waltz with Bashir"
A New Kind of Documentary
Amos Lassen
Israel's entry in the Oscar race gives a new definition of the genre of documentary film. The idea of an animated documentary may seem to be paradoxical to some but this may be a whole new way to present an idea. Basically, the film rakes place in a bar, an old friend tells "Bashir" director, Ari Folman, about a nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. The dream comes to him every night and the two men decide that there is a connection between the dream and their connection to an army mission during the war on Lebanon in the early 80's. Ari surprises his friend and himself when he realizes that he cannot remember anything about that period in his life. They decide to interview old friends and comrades all over the world in order to find out what really happened during that time and as Ari goes deeper into the matter and the mystery, his memory begins to return with surreal thoughts and images.
"Bashir" is a very disturbing look at war and its consequences on people and nations. It compares the atrocities of the Lebanon war to other wars as it mixes dream sequences with surrealism and real life events. The film thereby mixes reality with illusion. It is in your face and very powerful.
The event that is the center of the film is the massacre at Sabra and Shatila un which Palestinians were murdered by Christian Phalangists as revenge for the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel. Although the Israelis did not participate, or perpetrate the killings, they did nothing to stop them. The animation in the film is seen over the recorded speech of actual participants in the '82 war.
Folman's journey of introspection begins with his lack of memory and it seems that all he and his fellow soldiers have left is their dreams. One of the former soldiers believes that the dream he has of the vicious dogs is subconscious punishment for his killing dogs on the mission. The film follows a stream of personal anecdotes and because much of these stories are dreams, Folman chose to tell them through animation with the exception of the final scene and this is the scene that gives justification for the film. Therefore the film has a feeling that is both evocative and down-to-earth. We see war as reprehensible and ugly and as the stuff that nightmares are made of. It is not about who won the war, who was right or who made mistakes. It is about how we, as people, react to war and how it affects people who are involved in it.
Primarily "Bashir" is about the trauma of conflict, memory and its repression but it is also about the specifics of Israel's role in the Lebanon war and about war in general as it is experienced by fighting men. It revels truth by taking the viewer back in time through the memories of people who witnessed it. It devastates as it reconstructs how and why innocent civilians were massacred because those with the power to stop what was going on did nothing. We do see that Israel is not without guilt in acts of passive genocide which goes against the Israeli response to what Hamas provokes.
From the very first frame of film the movie grabs the viewer and will not let him go even after the film is over. The movie cuts deeply by using images of youth and this brings what he says home. This is more than just a movie, it is a total experience that will probably change the views of many.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sure-fire Oscar winner up-ended by the industry's "long-standing joke", February 25, 2009
I'm compelled to write this review after watching the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Foreign Film selectors botch yet another award. David Ansen wrote in Newsweek last year about how the selection committee's decision-making, umm, 'process' is the industry's "long-standing joke." The right films don't even get nominated (Ansen's article centered on the egregious omissions last year of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Band's Visit). And the ultimate winner is often the ultimate head-scratcher: faced this year with two sure-fire classics - this film and the equally worthy French offering The Class (Entre les murs) [Theatrical Release] - the committee chose instead the little-known (and almost completely unseen) Japanese nominee Departures [Theatrical Release]. With all due respect to those filmmakers, you could hear the sense of bewilderment in the hall as the dazed winners (I suspect even they were dumbfounded) made their way to the stage. I'm sure that bewilderment was mixed with murmurs from an audience of insiders - something along the lines of "unbelievable, they've blown it again."
A shame because this film is among the best you'll ever see - it's writer/director Ari Folman's attempts to deal with his repressed memories of his role in the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres during the 1982 Lebanon War. Folman's innovative use of animation allows him to re-stage the memories of his fellow soldiers. At the film's end, Folman's role (or at least his proximity to the events) is revealed and animation segues into real-life footage of what transpired in the camps.
The Golden Globe committee - with a far more firmer grasp on common sense than the Academy - handed 'Waltz' its award for the best foreign language film of 2008.
Ansen's article from last year reveals the Academy's "attempt to reform a misbegotten system," and concludes that "Mark Johnson, chairman of the committee, has vowed further reforms. History suggests it's going to be an uphill battle."
Keep working at it, Mr. Johnson. This thing is still broken.
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20 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Waltz With Bashir ; Jewish Self - Flagellation, October 4, 2009
WALTZ WITH BASHIR got one thing right. When it comes to compulsive self criticism, Jews and Israel can't be beat.
If I had just dropped in from Mars with little knowledge of world history, and my first history lesson was WALTZ WITH BASHIR, I'd assume that Israel was an immoral miscreant for trying to defend itself against a particular ideology that delights in killing Jews. For example, on March 11, 1978, the PLO crossed from Lebanon into Israel, hijacked two buses, and murdered 37 people in cold blood, mostly kids. During the course of Arafat's adventures in Lebanon, the PLO murdered thousands of Christians, conducted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and according to the U.N., violated 270 documented cease fire agreements. These little facts, including any reference to terrorists, Fatah, the PLO, or endemic Jew-hatred in the Middle East were conspicuously absent from the movie.
Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon suffered approximately 200,000 civilian fatalities in a series of running conflicts involving Muslims vs. Christians, Syrians vs. Christians, the PLO vs. both Jews and Christians and the U.S. Marines getting hammered in Beirut. The number of civilians killed by the IDF was a small fraction of this number. One major point that the movie failed to point out is that the government of Lebanon INVITED the Israelis into Lebanon to help them get rid of the PLO, which the IDF eventually succeeded in doing. Part of the deal was to allow Arafat and his thugs to escape to Tunisia where Arafat could spend his days dreaming of dead Jews and basking in the glow of his European and Arab sycophants. Then, in 1993, under the Oslo Accords, Jewish guilt plus temporary insanity caused Israel to invite Arafat and the PLO back to the West Bank. Big Mistake! Let's not forget that when Israel REALLY occupied the West Bank, and not just 1.7% as it does today, Israel built Palestinian Universities, roads, hospitals and the life expectancy of West Bank Palestinians went from 44 to 67 years of age!
The movie gives the impression that Beirut was utterly destroyed by the IDF. In fact, Beirut was largely in ruins due to Christian Phalange attacks against Palestinian positions well before the IDF arrived. It is true that the IDF shelled and bombed buildings and allegedly killed several thousand civilians in an effort to destroy the PLO and related Palestinian terrorists. This really got Europe and the U.N. upset because they believe that Jews should not be allowed to defend themselves unless they can absolutely guarantee that there will be no collateral damage. Of course, the movie completely ignored the factors that compelled Israel to enter Lebanon in the first place. History reveals that Europe and the U.N. were complacent, not only when the PLO terrorized Israel, but both Europe and the U.N. failed to mount any meaningful protest after the PLO murdered, raped and tortured the Christian residents of Damur. Just as irritating is the fact that Europeans, who are in no position to criticize Jews, are probably unaware that Palestinian Muslims have been killing Palestinian Jews long before Israeli statehood in 1948. Does Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood ring a bell? Probably not.
The final scene in the movie shows the massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. These camps, in fact they are cities, became headquarters for the PLO. NOTE: WHY ARE THERE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMPS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Some 800,000 Jews were driven out of Arab countries between 1948 and 1950, and most of them were successfully integrated into Israeli society. Why haven't Muslims accepted the Palestinians as equal citizens in any of their numerous nations? In any case, the IDF agreed to let the Christian militias go into the camps and drive out the PLO. The militias went crazy and took revenge on the Palestinians for murdering their families. During the siege of the camps, some members of the IDF suspected that Palestinian civilians were being killed, but they didn't do enough to stop it. In fact, the only recourse for the IDF would have been to go into the camps and start killing their Christian allies. In the end, after all the suffering caused by the PLO, the only thing that the world remembers is the Israeli connection to Sabra and Chatila.
Also, the movie makes the IDF out to be the most inept, corrupt, perverted fighting force in existence. One wonders how the IDF managed to win all its wars while receiving absolutely no American military aid during two of its most difficult defensive wars - Israel's War of Independence and the 1967, Six Day War?
Fred Remington
Del Mar
October, 2009Waltz With Bashir
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