by Joel
#87 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series in which I view, for the first time, some of the most critically acclaimed films of the previous decade.
The movie opens with black dogs, growling, yelping, barking as they race down a busy city street – hounds from hell whose presence puts the lie to the calm bustle around them. They arrive at a certain apartment building, yelping loudly – and the man in the apartment knows they’re yelping for him. Then he wakes up. This sequence was a dream, one inspired by his recollections of shooting dogs during an Israeli commando raid back in Lebanon of the early 80s. Now those dogs haunt his dreams, and in a sense the dreams are more real than the memories.
There have been many films about memory, and plenty of films about war, but Waltz with Bashir takes a unique approach to both. Firstly, there’s the fact that it’s animated – not exactly rotoscoped apparently, but drawn in accordance with taped interviews (fantasies, dreams, and flashbacks are, of course, simply animated). Secondly, while the movie is a documentary, it often plays like fiction, partly because of the animation (which allows past sequences to play less like History Channel “recreations” and more like narrative sequences) and partly because of the tightly unwinding dramatic structure. Finally, there’s the conjunction of the two subjects – war and memory. The memory in question is individual, but it’s also collective, and it’s not just a matter of remembering the past but experiencing the present. When Ari Folman, the director and main character, returns to Israel on leave from the Lebanon War of the early 80s, he’s shocked to find his peers dancing away in discos and ignoring the fact that a brutal war is unfolding just next door – and that men like him, their neighbors, friends, and relatives are fighting it. This doesn’t have much application to Israel today, where the homefront has become the war zone, but it certainly applies elsewhere.
Waltz with Bashir takes its title from an eccentric (and in therefore not at all unusual) wartime experience which unfolds in the heat of a Beirut firefight. Bashir Gemayel, the beloved leader of the vicious Christian militants, has just been assassinated, but his gigantic election posters still loom large over the bulletridden streets. One Israeli, frustrated by the ineffectiveness of his weapon, finally seizes a fellow soldier’s machine gun and leaps into the middle of the road, wide open to sniper fire, and begins firing rounds into the air, spinning in circles, the picture of Bashir grinning at him from every angle. This is just one of many stories shared in the course of Folman’s central quest – a quest to discover how much he knew about the Sabra and Shatila massacre in ’82 – how much he experienced firsthand, and thus how much he repressed. Because, you see, he can’t remember a thing about it, nor when he reflects on the matter, much of anything about Lebanon, where he spent the most intense days of his youth.
Visiting his friends one by one, Folman provides us both a portrait of the Israeli experience of war and a closer and closer understanding of what happened in that massacre, when as many as 3500 Palestinians were brutally murdered by the Phalangist militia, who were under Israeli supervision the whole time. As it eventually turns out, Folman’s memory and guilt are not really individual, but wholly collective. It seems he did not witness the massacre, as he had suspected, but that as part of the force in the area, and as a participant in a bloody war with its fair share of horrors outside of Sabra and Shatila (although most not to that extreme), and particularly as the child of Auschwitz prisoners, Folman is filled with anxiety by his country’s – and his own possible – involvement in mass murder. As J. Hoberman notes in his review, the particular nature of Folman’s anxiety is “an internal Israeli issue” but the film has universal ramifications.
The issue of memory is not only colored by the “investigative” documentary method (which also resembles an unwinding noir mystery at times) and the war genre – where the Rashomon-like flashback structure has been used before (one recent example that comes immediately to mind is the 1996 Gulf War film Courage Under Fire). It’s also colored by the animation, which takes the form of comic-book like visuals, often choppy rather than fluid, drawn in a stark, iconic fashion rather than a graceful, realistic one. The specific style of illustration can at times seem too limited (in weaker moments, it can seem like generic Flash animation) but at others it is extremely powerful, most notably in the central flashback, an elusive mystery in which Folman recalls seeing flares gently flicker down from the sky while he and his buddies bathed under a nighttime sky. The static quality of the overall image, juxtaposed with the slow but steady movement of the flare down the frame is a perfect visual metaphor for the fragmented nature of traumatic memory, for the mixture of surreal beauty and abject horror to be found in a war zone, for the way one element of a recollection can stick out while the rest is hazy or frozen.
The use of animation is also a way of placing purposeful distance between the viewer and a full sense of “understanding.” In this it resembles Art Spiegelman’s Maus which turns the all-too-real but impossible-to-represent horrors of the Holocaust into a broadly-drawn (yet dramatically realistic) cartoon – a literal cat-and-mouse game with feline Nazis and rodent Jews (which is both an ironic take on the Nazi propaganda featuring Jews as rats, and a poignant statement of Jewish helplessness in the face of the ferocious Gestapo). Like Spiegelman, Forman’s use of stylized drawing reminds us that what we are seeing is not “reality” and since the very subject of his movie is the ironic distance memory creates between the present and the past, form fits content quite well. Perhaps it might have been even more effective to show the interviews in live-action and the “memories” as animation, but in this particular context the discrepency might have been too distracting, and the memories might have seemed too unreal in contrast to the interviews, whereas in the film as it exists, they exist in an uneasy state between “real” and “not.”
The film’s final moments, its “Rosebud” so to speak, is actual footage of the civilians murdered in the massacres. To compare this to the burning sled in Citizen Kane may seem vulgar, but that’s precisely the point: does the use of actual images to effectively culminate a drama violate the film’s code, by removing the filter that Spiegelman and, until now, Folman agreed was necessary to properly represent the past and specifically its horrors? (I don’t really think so; Maus is Spiegelman’s representation of his father’s experience so the distance is part of the artist’s experience, not just the audience’s; whereas Folman is relying his own experiences, particularly once the veil of hazy memory has been lifted.) More importantly, does the film violate the unmitigated tragedy of these victims by using it as a climax? Conversations on this very site months ago explored the issue, with some feeling the footage exploitative, others necessary to sink in the point that “war is hell.”
I’m not sure myself; I don’t think Folman was wrong to use the images but this sort of thing is always a trouble area – even anger or sorrow, maybe especially anger or sorrow, can be cathartic emotions and one feels uncomfortable experiencing any sort of catharsis from real suffering (one is reminded of the critic – I think it was Rivette – who found the crucifixion-stylized imagery in a concentration camp film morally despicable; hear the images are not dressed up at all but even in their stark state their placement within the overall film could be objected to). At any rate, ethical questions of how a film should use such footage pale in comparison to the questions surrounded responsibilities for the very massacres which produces such footage and, to a lesser extent, governmental and public culpability for war in general. Interestingly, in a time of many angry films, and on a subject where there is a great deal to be angry about, Waltz with Bashir is not at an angry film, except maybe in those last moments (and even then the cut to reality seems more like despair than indignation).
Folman’s demeanor throughout the film is not outraged, but confused, quiet, and sad, occasionally pausing for a well-earned chuckle or a contemplative stare. This is a wise approach, though no doubt it was his natural demeanor and not a conscious decision. Somehow this melancholy expressiveness conveys Folman’s fleeting yet ultimately incommunicable (even, at times, to himself) experiences more effectively, and sorrowfully, than pure fury ever could. Those silences speak volumes – and beneath the quiet we think we can hear screams, sobs, and machine gun fire – or perhaps it’s just the sound of barking dogs, which may be bad enough.
Previous film: The Son
Next film: My Winnipeg
I’m having a tough time figuring out whether you liked this film or not, Movie Man. But it’s still an impressibly-written review.
What makes “WALTZ WITH BASHIR” so amazing to me is the personal message delivered throughout the film about the 1982 Lebanon War but also Folman’s message that there is nothing cool about war. And then ending the film with a real life atrocity that when Folman finds out the truth of why he has blocked out his old war memory, its simply ends with an unforgettable scene, a moment that echoes Folman’s message of how war is hell.
The flash animation is vibrant and colorful, and technically elevates the material even more.
I did like it but I suppose this is by design more an analytical review than an opinion one – even in the more opinionated ones, I like to focus more on where the movie is coming from or what it’s doing than what I think of that (usually the more judgemental parts will be limited to a paragraph or so) – just my personal approach, at least for this series. I would like to see Waltz with Bashir again at some point – indeed, I hoped to re-watch it before I wrote the piece, but time ran out unfortunately so this remains a first impression; I think there’s a lot more to dig into in the long run, though.
This was #3 on my own list for the decade’s best movies, and if that list weren’t also doubling as a voting ballot, I think it would’ve placed #2. Folman’s work in this film was exquisite. I’m surprised you didn’t compare it to Linklater’s “Waking Life”– not only does it have a similar animated scheme (weighing more heavily on rotoscoping, obviously), but the themes both films tackle are strikingly familiar to one another, with dreams taking center stage.
The rotoscoping aspect didn’t seem worth mentioning (too obvious, I suppose) but I’ll admit I didn’t consider the dreaming connection which is an interesting point.
Typically extraordinary essay, though I am not to be counted as one of this film’s fans.
The so-called massacres of the Palestinians that are the central issue in this narrative is not brought up until the film is about an hour old. The replacement method for the “rotoscope” animation that was effective in Linklater’s WAKING LIFE is a seeming re-drawing of pictures (of the interviews) to have them envision wartime attrocities. The results are disjointed and do nothing to bring this film together both psychologically and emotionally. In fact, until the last scene, it’s alienating and distancing. The film is a series of monochromatic abstractions that work to mitigate against the very themes that make it on paper a work of urgency. The issues surrounding the massacre have apparently been sorted out, so there’s neither any political agenda here, other than to mirror the current dire state of mid-east relations. WALTZ WITH BASHIR did nothing to deepen one’s sadness. It was largely an exercise in tedium.
After watching this film, I’d advise one review Lewis Milestone’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, based on the towering novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Now THAT’S a great anti-war film
Wow, a completely unexpected but welcome (in the sense that it makes the discussion more interesting) dissent, Sam! Like you, I did not always feel that the purposefully rudimentory animation worked to the film’s advantage but at its best moments, I think it did. I also agree that there was no real political agenda here, but otherwise we seem to disagree. I’m not sure why you use the word “so-called” for the massacres though, as that’s pretty clearly what they were – also they were brought up right away (in the bar scene), even though they were not really the focus of the storytelling until the last third.
If I were ranking, I’d probably place All Quiet higher as its a fuller picture and probably more powerful, but I definitely value Waltz, which is a different beast than All Quiet – not a shout into the maelstrom but a whisper of melancholy confusion and despair in the deafening silence following an explosion. So a bit apples & oranges to my eyes.
For the sake of simplicity, I’m simply going to repost what I said about this film back over at The Aspect Ratio and hold that as a momentary rebuttal to Sam’s casual dismissal of Folman’s film, which I hold to be one of the most important works of the decade, especially as far as animated works go:
“I don’t even know where to begin in attempting to describe how much I admire this movie. Ari Folman’s blistering look at Israel’s role in the invasion of Lebanon and a slaughter of Muslim civilians by Christian extremists is a lot of things—a hybrid autobiography and pseudo-documentary in the vein of Morretti’s comedic Caro Diario; an examination of the military mentality of a country born from the ashes of one of the worst war crimes ever committed; a psychological travelogue of a mental landscape which probes the unreliability of memory, the import of dreams and the effect that any great trauma can have on the mind; and perhaps most tellingly, a cartoon. In filtering his meta-cinematic fiction through the Flash-assisted lens of Waking Life-style animation, Folman provides the perfect aesthetic with which to express his hazy, disturbing and highly personalized recollections of his service in the Israeli army, eschewing the implicit reality of staged live-action recreations with the obvious fiction of drawn imagery which barely even appears to be based too heavily on rotoscoped footage. Countless features of this decade have mixed reality with the digital, inventing the landscapes and populations of entire planets wholly out of pixels on a computer-screen, but Folman and his team of artists are able to do something even more impressive, and concoct a simulacra of historical events and intimate memories which represent the truth without ever attempting to assert themselves as pureblooded fact. It is a highly subjective, first-person account of events which benefits from the visual distance supplied by the stylish, but down-to-earth animated imagery, and one which provides many enlightening moments as to the nature of the mind’s instincts to retract within itself at times of dangers and the uncomfortable realities of warfare. With an unflinching ending that drops all its veils in an absolutely chilling way, Waltz With Bashir is easily the most effective and important animated film of the past ten years.”
http://www.theaspectratio.net/newmillenniumfilm10.htm
Bob: I respect your position, and was pained to take a strong stand in view of your long-known passion for it. You have argued your case brilliantly here.
A very eloquent defense of the film, Bob, more so than mine I might add! I wonder if and what effect Waltz will have on the field. How applicable do you think its accomplishments will be to dissimilar films? It seems that the achievement you describe is so perfectly fitted to this film (i.e. one about traumatic and repressed memory, both collective and individual) – I wonder what potential it has in other scenarios (Waking Life, despite the dreaming connection, is doing something quite different I think – less interested in translating reality into a new form than in translating non-reality).
There’s a marvellous but all too rare moment in David Lean’s ‘Ryan’s Daughter’ in which the soldier, triggered by a sight or sound, scambles under a table as vivid flashbacks impinge upon his reality and he is scampering for dear life. It’s cinematically evoked shell-shock jolt by Lean.
For me, ‘Waltz with Bashir’ is an entire movie lived within the mind of one who is suffering PTSD; the questioning of the official line, some living in a lethagic world, others partying to lose themselves from themselves. It’s a disjointed world, alienating, abstracted world from which our investigator is trying to find a way back, distanced-some even cut themselves to awake. It’s this dream-like floating distance, as if a plane of glass had come between him and the real world. For others, it’s sheer terror in every moment of their life. It’s how the Vietnam vets – in fact all Veterans actually feel. Unreal until pinged upon daily razors of horror.
It’s been suggested in some quarters, that Philip K. Dick may have suffered some kind of PTSD and as Linklater’s ‘WAKING LIFE’ is in large part influenced and a homage to Dick, the comparison rings true.
The final showing of the massacre is a lucid whiff, a shocking breakthrough into one of the images that haunt the living dead. Of why these people, back from war, suffer as they do.
If Milestone’s great film ‘ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT’ had followed Ayes into civilian life, it’s the world we would have seen.
PS: Sam, your excellent capsule review of ‘Well of Doom’ got replied to by, not that it matters, David Schow!
Aye, Joel, another vintage Bobby J. comment here!
Bobby, thanks for mentioning David J. Schow’s response to me at the A THRILLER A DAY blogsite (now up on our blogroll!) That was a great honor, as Schow’s OUTER LIMITS COMPANION is one of my favorite reference volumes! And I see now that Gary Gereni has chimed in on that thread as well!!! Gerani, as you know is the author of the seminal FANTASTIC TELEVISION!!!!
Thanks, Bobby, a great comment. The Dick/PTSD connection is another compelling link between the two films.
Apparently Folman is going to use this same technique in his next film, an adaptation of the novel “The Futurological Congress” by Stanislaw Lem, author of “Solaris”. It’s not quite a connection to PKD, but a similarly concerned sci-fi writer, and therefore an item of some interest.
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Reading through the thread I can say that wether JOEL liked the film or not is inconsequential to me. He has fashioned and insightful and appreciative review and I found thhis a wonderful read.
MYSELF? I think this is an extraordinary film that treats the genre in a way that enthused me towards the subject…
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