Waltz with Bashir (film review)

Called the first animated documentary, it's certainly one of the most moving and disturbing films I've seen, and an artistic achievement. I'm not sure about the "documentary" label, though, as Folman, while using authentic interviews as the core, constructs a fictionalized frame narration around them. Perhaps some cinematic equivalent of Truman Capote's term for In Cold Blood - non-ficton novel - is called for.

Waltz with Bashir deals with the 1982 Lebanon War, and it does so in a manner which reminds me of American Vietnam movies. Which is yet another reason why I'm hesitating with the "documentary" label. If you recall, most Vietnam movies don't really feature the Vietnamese, except as shadowy figures firing on the Americans (the Vietcong) or victims (unfortunate villagers getting massacred). Similarly, Waltz With Bashir focuses exclusively on the testimony of eight former Israeli soldiers plus Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai, who was the first to cover the Sabra and Shatila massacre; there are no interviews with Palestinians or Lebanese of either the Christian or the Muslim persuasion. Palestinians, like the Vietnamese in American Vietnam movies, only show up as shadowy figures firing, or as massacre victims; they do not have a voice (though the inarticulate desperate cries at the end are incredibly powerful) of their own. There is also no attempt to paint a larger picture, as it were, beyond establishing who the Bashir of the title was, and that his death triggered the Christian Phalangists conducting a massacre among Palestinian and Lebanese civilians on September 16 and 18, 1982. With the debate in how much the Israeli army, who was in control of the refugee camps, allowed it to happen and/or actively encouraged it, raging to this day; the Kahan comission established after the war found the then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to bear "personal responsibility" and demanded his resignation, with a reccomendation that he should never hold public office again; this, however, is not something the film covers; among other things, it does expect you to know who Sharon is and what job he held during the first Lebanon war when Ron Ben-Yishai refers to a conversation with him. There is no background for the first Lebanon War, either, which I would expect in a "normal" documentary... but not necessarily in a fictional account, because fiction does focus on the personal stories over the big picture. Which this film does as well, essentially employing fictional narrative techniques for a non-fiction story; the "characters" come across vividly, and the audience puts together a picture based on their personal experience of the war which is, by necessity, an intense but limited one.

It's apparant early on that the decision to use animation was a bold and creative one. It means that when a former soldier describes a nightmare, you as the audience see the nightmare in surrealist pictures; ditto for the memories. The colour used for a crucial dream sequence hints to the later revelation as to what this dream actually stands for and cover. The entire opening sequence is an illustration of how memories, nightmares and guilt intermingle and transform. We see demonic dogs hunting down a street until they arrive in front of a window, and the dogs look as scary as anything; then we cut to a bar scene and realise that what we've just seen is a nightmare a former soldier just ends describing to a friend. And then he presents the memory, the reason why he dreams of demon dogs; as his unit approached villages, it was his task to shoot the dogs so they couldn't give alarm. This time, we see the memory-dogs, and they're simply normal dogs, and we see them die as the soldier describes, in agony.

The use of music (soundtrack by Max Richter, with additional rock songs of the era) is fantastic; music is as much a voice in the film as the ones by the characters. Again, it makes the whole film feel very much like a fictional one, for example in the surreal and beautiful sequence where one of the soldiers dreams of being taken away from all this by a gigantic beautiful woman emerging from the sea... and then he dreams of the boat he was on getting blown up. But the most devastating use is made by the complete absence of music at the very end, when the animated recreation fades into the real footage from the massacres aftermath.

The DVD includes a making-of-, as well as storyboards and abandoned sequences/interviews (i.e. deleted scenes, if you like); in both cases, you can see why these particular soldiers never made it to the final version. The ones who did are all sympathetic in varying degrees, which given what this film leads up to is pretty important, whereas one of the two "deleted" soldiers among other things complains that the Lebanese girls, instead of being properly grateful they weren't raped, were as arrogant as the girls back home. If anything I find it surprising this interview did result in some sketches before it dawned on Folman and his team there was no way this guy wouldn't come across as an utterly hateful jerk.

It's a film that draws you in relentlessly, but leaves you with questions, both historical ones and the same ones your avarage American Vietnam movie leaves you with; in focusing so exclusively on the soldiers and their trauma, isn't the film victimising the people who died all over again? I can't make up my mind on this, either.