CarnivalAskew

A movie that is written, produced and directed by one person is always deeply personal. However, Waltz with Bashir takes it to a whole new level by having Ari Folman star as the central character and basing the film on a true event.

The film starts off with Ari’s friend discussing his obsessive dreams about the 1982 Lebanon War. Ari then realises after having a surrealist dream of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that his memory of the period is missing. The film then develops as Ari visits his wartime friends in an attempt to regain his memory. Interesting and unconventional conversations unfold as the characters tell stories of the war and their idiosyncratic experiences alongside Ari’s attempts to unravel his role in the massacre.

Folman has had a successful career directing documentaries. He directed his graduate film Comfortably Numb (1991) which facetiously depicted the escapades of his friends during the Gulf War. He then entered the realm of animation in 2004 with his series The Material that Love is Made of which comically documented a scientific analysis of love. It is then easy to see how he joined both mediums in Waltz with Bashir.

Using an animated and quasi-documentary style worked quite well. It sucks us into a world of irony. For example, the animation is able to jump from monotonous machine gun fire and death to a comical scene showing the great lengths the military take to destroy a red car. The scene shows all this over a ripping guitar solo in a presumably parody song with lyrics, ‘We bombed Beirut today. We bomb Beirut everyday’.

However despite Folman leaving us with little lolly bags of chuckles along the way, the film can seem long. Although it is an ‘acceptable’ eighty seven minutes, the documentary style and interviews can at times drag on. Nonetheless, Waltz with Bashir is intriguing in the way it absorbs the documentary style and fits it in to a narrative mould. More importantly the anti-war message of Waltz with Bashir trembles our human spirit. To nit-pick about time and style is like judging Gandhi by his fashion sense.

In this respect Folman’s motivation is clear. He wishes to tell the story of each character truthfully but he does not necessarily want us to share the pain. Life is told more powerfully when we trust more in our imagination than that of our memory. A character in the film summarised this concept aptly when he said to Ari after their conversation, ‘You can draw anything, just don’t film’. This is, in all aspects, what Ari Folman has done in telling us about the war and its many stories.

Cannes International Film Festival 2008 - Official Selection Competition -

Run time: 87 minutes

Written, Directed, Produced by Ari Folman

Animation by Bridgit Folman Film Gang

Rating MA

http://waltzwithbashir.com/

Release Date: September 11, 2008