Review of Waltz with Bashir (2008) by Edith N — 14 Oct 2009

The Uncertainty of Remembrance.

The exciting thing about this film is that it was eligible in three categories. It is an animated documentary from Israel. It ended up nominated for one, Best Foreign Language Film, and it lost to Japan's [i]Departures[/i]. It could not have beaten [i]WALL-E[/i] for best animated, but it should have been nominated. (It's a hell of a lot better than [i]Bolt[/i]!) I'm not sure about Best Documentary Feature; I don't think it's better than [i]Man on Wire[/i] or [i]Encounters at the End of the World[/i], and I haven't seen the other three. However, that's not really my point. My point is that this is an extraordinary film just from a purely technical perspective. I don't know of any other animated documentary, though more on the documentary bit anon. Though I guess arguably [i]Persepolis[/i], if we are counting autobiographies, and I see no reason not to, especially in this case, where practically everyone is voicing himself, as well as Zahava Solomon, the only woman in the film (aside from a sequence where a male character is watching porn), who voices herself.

Ari Folman was a soldier in the Lebanese War. It is now, obviously, many years later, and he has long since left all of that behind. In fact, he is talking to a friend who is having vivid, recurring dreams about that time, and Ari realizes that he himself cannot remember those days. That time in his life is a complete blank. This worries him, and he goes off in search of others who share those memories and people who can help unlock them. He goes to see Solomon, who is a psychologist specializing in psychological trauma, something Ari obviously experienced during the war. Of course, a major focus of the film is not only that Ari is not alone in that trauma but that his psychological trauma pales in comparison to things like, you know, the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Only Ari can't remember where he was during that or what he was doing during that time. Even as all the others' memories come pouring in, his own remain hidden.

This is a visually captivating film. It isn't rotoscope or motion-capture or any of the cheat styles. They did film in advance, but only as a motion guide for working things out in the computer. The things done with light are pretty impressive in a lot of places. The orange of flares, the still white of the snowscape, the dark uncertainty of the bar where our story begins. I have noticed that a lot of animated films don't bother with that sort of thing--it's one of the things I like about Pixar, actually--and this does quite well for such a low budget film. ($2,000,000, and doesn't it say something about modern film that that's considered a low budget now?) I'm not actually a huge fan of the drawing style, the fact that the movements are so stiff, but it's certainly a distinctive enough look that I'd know a clip from it anywhere.

Oddly, this is not based on a graphic novel, though there is one now, which I read first. As live action films inspire novelizations, apparently, this inspired graphic novelization, and why not? It may even be word-for-word, a thing you wouldn't get in a regular novelization. And there, we get into the discussion of autobiography again--but assuredly [i]Vals Im Bashir[/i] is not the first graphic novel autobiography, and there are even more that are just biographies. In fact, arguably the greatest graphic novel ever written/drawn is [i]Maus[/i], Art Spiegelman's story about his father's experiences during the Holocaust. Will Eisner, considered the father of the genre, did a fair amount of autobiography, biography, and thinly-disguised versions of both. I consider this to be a worthy addition to that tradition, even if it's hardly as good as the best.

How objective is Folman? An interesting question. At its heart, the film doesn't have to be all that objective. It's not about the broader context of the war. It's not about whether Israel, the Arabs, or the Christians were in the right. It is true that no blame is attached to Israel for the massacres in question except inasmuch as the higher-ups didn't seem to have the slightest interest in stopping it, but I'm not sure there's any evidence that he's wrong about that. Even if there is, I'm not sure anyone he talks to would have known that for sure. What's more, I don't think any of us see our own lives with any kind of clarity, and this is a story built up of a handful of people's own lives. Indeed, I'm reasonably sure the people are telling their stories in their own words, not Folman's. He's credited as screenwriter, but then, he'd have been the one to have put the stories together into one coherent line. Either way, no, the story doesn't put as much blame on Israel as it probably should. Then again, it seems quite clear on the fact that Israel isn't blameless, and that's objectivity of a sort.