Scene from "Waltz with Bashir"

WOOF! WOOF! And the dogs race towards you screaming; the men are quietly debating what happened during their time as Lebanon War soldiers. BANGBANGBANG! And the mortars are roaring while the guns spew death; the men are quietly debating what happened. I look at the screen and a spastic storyteller comes to mind. This erratic movie caught me entirely off guard with its different spasms of sound and visuals.

This Waltz follows the path of a Lebanon war vet trying to recover his memories of the war many years later. The war vet is actually the director, Ali Folman, himself. Scenes are animated in this production, and it adds a certain depth to it that cannot be obtained otherwise. You could do things in an animated movie that would be quite out of place in a real life movie 0 the “waltz” for which this movie is named comes to mind. There is something peculiar about watching a soldier dodge bullets and shotting enemies all while dancing. Shoot. Dance. Dodge. Shoot. Dodge. Dance.

The refugee massacre that shocked the world decades ago again makes an appearance that shakes up the atmosphere. The streets are paved in red. The walls are paved in red. My eyes are paved in red. Bashir withholds nothing from the war or from the audience. However, in the midst of telling a solemn war story, Folman opts to introduce some indecency. Watching an animated plumber have sex with a client is not my cup of tea.

Blocky animation and mesmerizing music coupled with an intriguing war story gives Bashir a good edge over other contemporary documentaries.

When I initially sat down in anticipation of “Waltz With Bashir,” I didn’t know what to expect.  My instincts told me that it would be an old-fashioned movie with dated, classical music, making sense of the name of the play.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong.  The delivery and style of the movie was truly unique and unlike any other production I have ever seen before. 

The most difficult part of entertainment is capturing the elusive attention of the viewers and maintaining it throughout the production.  “Waltz With Bashir” certainly accomplishes at least part of this challenging task.  The opening scene consisted of a bone-chilling dream that had viewers gasping for air and on the edge of their seats within the first ten minutes of the movie.  The snarling, vicious dogs running through town made viewers cringe and shield their eyes in anticipation of their prey.  Ari Folman’s production dealt with the always-controversial topic of war, which immediately grabbed the attention of viewers.

Folman took a great risk choosing to use animation to create his documentary of the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war.  Using comic book-like techniques to depict a dreary topic of war and death was unheard of.  From my own observations, there were mixed emotions on Folman’s use of animation.  Some thought it was ingenious, while others felt it took away from the seriousness of the topic.  I agree with the latter of the two.  In my opinion, I believe the movie would have had a greater effect if it were filmed using real actors and scenery.

Although Folman succeeds in obtaining interest and attention early in the movie, I believe he fails to maintain it throughout the entire course of the movie.  Once people adjusted to this film style, the story lost its appeal.  There were even certain scenes I found myself asking, “What does this have to do with anything?”  For example, a nude woman twice the size of an average man magically appears on a boat and takes a military man away with her.  I’m sure there was some significance to that scene, but for the average viewer it only convoluted the plot.

On the other hand, one highlight of this production was the interesting music.  Folman’s use of music was one aspect of the movie that worked very well.  The unpredictable use of the classical waltz showed Ari Folman’s skill as a director and storyteller.  Most people expected the movie to have a scene in a ballroom, but that wasn’t the case.  The misleading title surprised viewers when the waltz was used as a technique to dodge bullets for survival.  Along with music, the ending of the movie both shocked and wowed the audience in a disturbing and enlightening way, much like that of the first time Saving Private Ryan did the first time viewers saw it.  Saving Private Ryan was one of the first movies to show the real, bloody side of the war without holding back, shocking audiences.  This was very similar to what Folman did in “Waltz With Bashir.”  Folman obviously wasn’t afraid to tell the truth about war.

All in all, “Waltz With Bashir” is worth the price on the ticket.  There are both highlights and drawbacks to this movie, but no movie is perfect.  The music, along with the beginning and end of the movie, make up for where the movie lacks.  The animation style is interesting to view, especially with such a serious topic.  Most of the time when people think of animation they imagine Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny with a shotgun, but people will be shocked when they see this production.

An eccentric yet animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir took the audience into a surreal world of fear, confusion, and internal struggle. Directed by Ari Folman, Waltz with Bashir won six Israeli Academy Awards for its innovative style of reinventing a piece of Israeli history that claimed more than 3,000 defenseless Palestinian refugees. Waltz with Bashir took me off-guard, and soon during the film, I found myself paralyzed with the bizarreness of the massacre and the insanity of war itself.

“It could only be done by animation,” the director answered in a frank manner during the talk. If the film were a live interview of seven men, it wouldn’t have been possible. The animation format integrated the dream sequence of the vicious dogs and the emergence of men from the water with the overall theme of guilt and helplessness for the veterans from the 1982 Lebanon war. Veterans, similar to Ari Folman, found themselves unable to cope with the psychological distress, for they knew nothing about what had happened to them during the war. As memories were told from one to another, one usually found memories evolve overtime. In the end, the memories might not be what had exactly happened but what one wanted the memories to be.

One of the best scenes from the film was essentially the title itself, Waltz with Bashir. Brandishing the machine gun, one of Ari Folman’s commanders found himself surrounded by heavy enemy fire between walls with posters of Bashir Gemayel. In the scene, Ari Folman combined classical background music with the aimless shooting by the soldiers to express the absurdity of comparing battleground to ballroom. The sex scene, however, did not fit into the content of the film. The sex scene created almost an imbalance to the theme of the film, misplaced between two scenes that it has no connection with.

Although the film was animated, the last scene included documentary news footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. The news footage gave the audience a real picture of the death of 3,000 defenseless Palestinian refugees.

            There was however, a lot to like in the way of how the film was presented. The use of animation to tell this story is one that I would agree with. There was so much in the way of special effects and flashbacks, that it would have been extremely tough to use live actors. Animation enables things to be done in the movie, which would not have had the same effect if produced through any other means. The music gives the performance a definite boost as it really brings the action to a fever pitch at times. The director also throws in an unexpected ending, which shows real life footage of the real-life story being told. This was a particularly powerful moment as it brings to the forefront what this movie was really about. There is a strong message to the film regarding the horrors of war and the how it causes suffering to all involved.

            Overall, Waltz with Bashir was an intriguing film but it was plagued with confusion. I had trouble knowing exactly where the character was supposed to be or what significance does the character that he is currently speaking to have. For those of you who do not mind sudden, unexplainable twists and multiple characters with varying levels of significance, or those of you who are interested only in excellent animation and a spell-binding score, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, this movie does not deliver. It has its good qualities but they do not do enough to eclipse its flaws. I am genuinely frustrated by the awkward style of telling of the story because Waltz with Bashir does have a message to give to its audience, and it is one that should be taken seriously.

The movie starts out with one of the characters being pursued by ravaging dogs racing down empty streets and alleys. As the dogs run, mothers cling to their children and people jump out of their way.  This is the recurring dream of a man who has been through war; he is pursued by every dog he shot at the entrances to the Lebanon villages.
“Waltz with Bashir” is a stunning exploration of war, memory, and the disturbingly subjective nature of truth. It is an animated documentary about a man who tries to remember his experiences and what he witnessed during a massacre in the Lebanon war. This man is bothered by the recurring nightmare and tries to figure out what it means. He visits his friend who is a filmmaker to talk to him about it, but the filmmaker himself surprises him by saying that he cannot remember anything from those times.  The filmmaker, Ari, goes on a journey to collect as many memories as possible from the Lebanon war, images and experiences he can’t remember. Ari tries to fill in this black hole in his memory as he tries to remember the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Israeli soldiers allowed Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen to go into two Palestinian refugee camps, where they then slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
Even though the movie is in an animated format, we witness a shocking ending of fifty seconds of real pictures and videos of the massacre. The director, Ari Folman said that those fifty seconds of brutal visuals are so touching to people that they seem like fifty minutes.
Folman said this documentary is animated because he couldn’t make it anything else.  He thought making such a controversial topic into an animated film was the best way to depict everything that he experienced and all the events that led up to massacre of so many innocent people. I found the movie interesting and very unique. Because the movie is animated, it enables the director to doing things that a Steven Spielberg film can’t do.  It opens more doors and more opportunities because most of what he remembers is very dream-like and unrealistic. Animation allows Folman to control the image while keeping everything one step away from reality.
This movie is definitely anti-war.  It is made so that it shows some of the downsides of being involved in war and what sometimes happens to innocent civilians. As the main character goes on his journey, we learn interesting things about life, people and war.  We learn that sometimes people ignore those in need of help and protection because they themselves don’t want to get hurt. We also learn that there are people who don’t care what they do/who they kill. At a point in the movie, Ari, and the other soldiers get attacked by the enemy; they start firing back and Ari gets up and goes in the midst of all the fighting and bullets and starts to dance/shoot all around. This part I found a bit odd because when soldiers are being attacked I wouldn’t expect anyone to go in the middle of it with almost no chance of survival. I would expect everyone to lay low and protect themselves.
One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Ari gets back from war and wanders through the streets of the punk Israeli youth.  Their attempts at being “tough” sharply contrast the images of war, bullets, and bloodshed. I think this was intended to show us how war is a part of our life, and yet something very distant to us, something that doesn’t affect us.  The horrors of our nightmares (like the nightmare with which the movie opened up) are nothing compared to the real-life horror and brutality of war.
Overall I think this film was interesting but disquieting. It took a different approach to an autobiographical documentary than other real-life stories of war.  “Waltz with Bashir” is in original form. The use of animation enables the director to explore the imagination of memory, incorporating the dream like montage of the scenes from the Lebanon war from several peoples’ perspectives.  It also gives the director a creative and evocative freedom to take this film in any direction and do with it anything he wants.  This story begs the question of responsibility for this massacre and the involvement of Israel while remaining cautiously close to what was happening.  A must-see for all.

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Director Ari Folman described his work as applicable to the soldiers of any war. True to this description, Waltz with Bashir, while avoiding mediocrity through its unique art style and articulate direction, fails to ever accomplish anything previous war movies have not.
Dubbed an animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir speaks of Ari Folman’s struggle in trying to understand a recurring dream of his. The struggle leads him to meet with psychiatrists, reporters, and fellow war veterans of the 1982 Lebanon War. The fact that this movie focuses so much on the psyche of war veterans means that it is bound to tread territory that has already been touched upon in recent years. The feelings of old men tired of war, the emotions of soldiers in battle, and the subtle humor behind the grimness have all been the subject of many artworks of our time and anything similar at this point seems redundant.
Despite this, however, the film still manages to feel fresh due to superior direction and aesthetic effects. The fact that this movie so strongly revolves around dream sequences means that it could have only been done through animation or computer generated imagery, the latter of which, if done convincingly, is drastically more expensive. Instead of rotoscoping (a technique where animation is achieved through tracing over live action footage), however, this movie was hand-drawn which, while allowing artists greater freedom, also makes character models move without the fluidity of actual motion. This is a problem prevalent in Waltz with Bashir, where characters, while detailed in slides, are rigid in motion. The rest of the movie, however, is visually stunning. The decrepit battlefields, the blazing balls of fire raining from the sky, and the salivating hounds are just some fine examples of the level of detail that went into each and every frame. Similarly, the color schemes, dark yet teasingly leaving specks of light lingering throughout, help to further the feelings of gauntness and perpetual waiting appropriate for times of war.
The direction of the film, too, is excellent and brings to life a relatively unoriginal concept. The dreams, especially Folman’s, are repeated throughout the movie and create an air of surrealism uncommon in films with such a subject. While this does make it more difficult to consider the film a documentary, it clearly makes it more cinematic. The pacing is also well done, with serious dreams and war sequences supplemented by absurd jokes, such as a comical break up or an explicit sex scene. The sound, consisting of battle effects and a translated war classic, is generic but appropriate. The best directorial choice, however, is the transition to live footage at the end, lending that seriousness and believability that a documentary demands.
Ultimately, Waltz with Bashir stands more as a testament to Folman’s directorial skill and less to the pains of his experiences. A passable movie saved only by its direction and design, this is one worth watching, but not re-watching.

Weird Dream

With a title like “Waltz With Bashir,” one may expect a dance documentary or a movie about ballroom dancers, but that was not the case at Ziegfeld Theatre for the New York Film Festival this year. Instead, I was blown away by an animated feature about the 1982 war in Lebanon. It is the personal story of its director, Ari Folman.

            The film begins with the main character having a nightmare of dogs ruthlessly chasing him through the city in the middle of the night. When he relays its details to his veteran friend, he gets no answers to why decades after the war, he is just now being mentally affected. He then goes to his psychologist, who explains the way the mind’s memory works. Ari is told that his mind tries to fills holes in memory by creating its own material to bring a story together. Ari is in turn frustrated by his inability to remember what actually happened during the war, so he travels as far as Belgium on a quest to replace the holes in his memory.

            Not only does Waltz With Bashir combine interview scenes with dream and memory scenes of the subconscious, but this original film also combines the genres of anime and war movies. Despite their cartoonish quality, the characters were realistic depictions of war veterans. Also, I think the medium of the film suits its themes of dreams and the subconscious well and the colors and style of the animation set a drab, gloomy war motif.

            After the initial intensity of the fierce dog scene, Waltz With Bashir depicts the terrors of war with a somewhat subtle approach. The only distraction from the plot I experienced was during the scene in which a military officer was shown watching pornography. It was very graphic, disgusting, and inappropriately long. The end of the film, however, was very dramatic and thought provoking as it took my mind off of any such distraction. I won’t ruin it for anyone, though; I will just leave it up to their own interpretation. 

Ari Folman as himself

“Memory is the most subjective thing in the world, I realize that memoryis alive”. Filmmaker Ari Folman reflected, meditatively leaning his chin on an open right palm, during a talkback on his unique animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir”.
It is the fantastical quality of his memories of the Lebanese War and his own personal guilt of his participation that led him to believe animation was the only channel that would do his memory justice. The animation, done by hand, focuses more on facial contours and highlights, in an attempt at realism. The seemingly simplistic, lines that make up his furrowed brow and shadows under his eyes, are still accurate enough to translate self-torture and a guilty conscience.
Apart from being a genre all itself, “Waltz with Bashir” is a personal reflection of an Israeli soldier who believes that a “memory repressed is a memory conserved”. In this case the memory would be the blind massacre of innocent Palestinians, during the Lebanon War by vindictive Bashir supporters. The Christians were enraged that their leader Bashir was murdered and they took it out on the refugee camps where people that were living there for years. Bullets and blood emitted from all directions and this destruction underwent a transition to actual film footage. Women, drifted across the screen screeching, flailing, pulling their hair, all in an open supplication for an answer to the cause of the destruction of their homes and families. This shows his acknowledgement that animation cannot fully invoke pathos as strongly as actual camera footage.
The use of animation as a format is not as questionable as some aspects of the film. According to Vincent Li, a fellow concerned viewer, ” The sex scene didn’t work”. Truthfully, many audience members where disconcerted by the crudeness of the event, that lacked cohesiveness with the rest of the scenes of war and murdered civilians. However, Folman’s inclusion of it deliberately confused the audience and subconsciously caused them to experience the confusion and surrealism he himself must have felt.
“Waltz with Bashir” is not a film that should be considered only because of the virtue of its animation but also of its thematic content. There is no specific format for war and whatever outcome there is, the results and the loss of life are atrocious enough to want to be forgotten. Folman chooses to reverse this process through the seemingly innocent process of animation and that is what makes this film memorable.

“Waltz with Bashir” was definitely out of the ordinary and separated itself from the usual documentary. Although a bit unusual, the animated documentary, directed by Ari Folman, was unique in that it was a surreal depiction of the guilt, death and shock of war – to the soldiers and of what really happened.

“Waltz with Bashir” is based on a true story of Folman’s life and experiences in the Lebanon War in 1982, a time of violence and conflict when Israel forces invaded southern Lebanon. At a bar, he meets a friend who tells him of the persistent nightmare that comes back to haunt him everyday – an image of 26 menacing dogs. Ari realizes that he does not remember anything during his service in the Israeli Army mission and decides to travel around the world to find the missing pieces of his life and relive his memory.

The selected music was intriguing and eccentric. The film had a variation of songs that included rock and classical music, an unusual mix. There was one particular melody that always played whenever a specific scene appeared – a scene in which the protagonist and his friends are bathing at night in the sea and gradually walk toward the city of Beirut which is burning in flames. This soothing yet somber classical melody signified the only memory that Ari had. It signified the reality that he was probably unable to accept. In the end, he discovered that he and his friends were walking towards the cries and aggression of the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila – a massacre that the soldiers noticed but could do nothing to stop.

The “Waltz with Bashir” was, indeed, a dramatic waltz. A commander of Ari’s unit grabs a heavy machine gun and dances the waltz while simultaneously shooting anywhere possible. Amidst heavy enemy fire, he dances and spins to the classical music playing, blocking out the violence and gunshots, while at the same time dodging bullets in slow motion. As he dances, we see that in the background, there are posters of Bashir Gemayel, the president of Lebanon at the time, hung on the surrounding buildings, making it seem as if he was “waltzing with Bashir”, hence the title. Although it seems unreal for a soldier to actually dance insanely amidst gunfire, the scene was significant in that it told the story of the historical turbulence in the Middle East.

The slideshow of reality presented at the end of the film was heart wrenching. Although disturbing, it symbolized the horror and devastation of war and, at the same time, emphasized what Folman had forgotten in his experience in Lebanon, a memory that will follow him forever. The conclusion of the film was brilliant in that as Folman comes to relive his memory and discovers reality, the cartoon documentary also becomes reality by showing the actual footage of the results of the massacre.