Waltz With Bashir
by Ari Folman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Shmuel FrenkelDirector: Ari Folman
Brand: Sony
Producer: Ari Folman
Writer: Ari Folman
Editor: Nili Feller
Producer: Gerhard Meixner
Producer: Roman Paul
Producer: Serge Lalou
Producer: Yael Nahlieli
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Hebrew (Original Language); English (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-06-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Movie Reviews of Waltz With Bashir
Movie Review: The Waltz of Death on the Streets of Beirut, September 1982
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of Waltz With Bashir
WALTZ WITH BASHIR - DVD MovieWaltz with Bashir presents an intriguing riddle: is a documentary still a documentary if it's animated? Taking over where fact-based animations like Waking Life and Chicago 10 left off, Israel?s Ari Folman tries to wrap his head around 1982's Lebanon War (the title refers to Lebanese leader Bashir Gemayel). Why do disturbing dreams plague his former army colleagues, while he remembers nothing? Folman meets with nine of them to find out. As they speak, animators recreate their experiences, but instead of rotoscoping or video-capture, Folman first shot his film on video and then assembled an animated version from the resulting storyboards. This graphic-novel approach suits their strange, surrealistic stories and parallels the work of Black Hole's Charles Burns, who tends to walk on the shadowy side (as opposed to Marjane Satrapi's more fanciful Persepolis). War may be hell, but moments of grace and beauty shine through, best exemplified by Roni Dayag?s recollection of a late-night swim away from the scene of a beachfront battle. Decades later, he still remembers the soothing peacefulness of the water. These reminiscences nudge Folman's repressed memories back to the surface, culminating in a horrific massacre to which he bore witness. Arguably, he didn't need to include actual footage of the deceased when stylized graphics get the point across fine. If Waltz with Bashir isn't a documentary in the conventional sense, it doesn't resemble most animated efforts either. What matters more is the harrowing narrative he constructs from out of the minds of these haunted men. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Stills from Waltz With Bashir (click for larger image)
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