Movie Reviews

Movie Reviews: Waltz With Bashir

Twenty-six rabid dogs tear through the streets, foaming at the mouth, seeking their target: a middle-aged man with glasses. He wakes with their barks, walks to his balcony and stares down into their flaming eyes. He has this dream each and every night and has, ostensibly, ever since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. His recounting of this dream over a few drinks is where Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s beautiful new animated documentary, begins.

The film is centered on Folman's quest for the moments, the rather large chunks of time, that he has forgotten since his tour of duty 25 years ago. The film is a self-propelled search for truth in the shadow of war—a powerhouse of self-reflection through which the audience may encounter some provocative ideas relevant to their own lives. After all, Waltz With Bashir is a film that obsesses in its exploration of the most malleable human tool: memory.

In his utilization of animation, Folman is able to transmute what would have been a standard documentary style narrative into something more engaging. The images, painstakingly hand-drawn by David Polonsky and his team of illustrators, reflect the horrors of war in a mesmerizing, surrealist manner. Each moment seems strung out and extended. Each step a character takes is slow, detached, and without hesitation. The process captures perfectly the idea that these young men, the conscripted soldiers of Israel’s war, are outside of themselves. This is not real for them. It is a dream in the same way that much of Waltz With Bashir passes as a dream. At any given moment, however, Folman can choose to tear down fantasy’s walls, leaving reality in all of its gruesomeness to burst forth.

As the film wears on, absorbing the audience fully into what is occurring or, more accurately, what has occurred, more and more layers of Folman's memory are unearthed. In Amsterdam one day, en route to the airport to return home to Israel, the flood of repressed images tears through. Folman, as hard as he may have tried, can no longer remain the distanced youth he once was. These images have unknowingly taken a toll on him, on his friends, on Israel.

One image is that of a young Palestinian boy in an orchard with an RPG that an Israeli unit takes out. The 26 dogs referred to earlier are reminders to the one recalling those images, of the dogs he sniped as his unit entered villages. The director himself dreams of walking out of the sea along with two comrades and turning to see Beirut in flames. Flares soar across the sky and there seems to be guilt attached to the young men as they stand, dumbfounded in their false purity, and watch like moviegoers. All of these images make up the cloth of Folman and the interviewee's collective memory—the memory of innocence lost, of death witnessed too soon as if it were nothing.

At the heart of Waltz With Bashir is what lies at the heart of narrative films such as Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and others: the futility of war, the uselessness of war. While Folman's film is without a doubt well-balanced and fair, there is a plaguing sense of distance that allows the audience to understand the director's perspective. In his mind, there is absolutely no question as to whether war is worthwhile or not. Because of this, the film is less about constructing some chastising polemic and more concerned with the humanity hidden beneath all of the political nonsense.

In the end, Waltz With Bashir is "nothing like you've seen in American movies. No glam, no glory—just very young men going nowhere, shooting at no one they know, getting shot at by no one they know, then going home and trying to forget. Sometimes they can." It seems like a good thing that Folman made the conscious choice to take a chance and remember.

—Alex Cripe
01.05.09