Review of Waltz with Bashir (2008) by Jennifer B — 26 Feb 2010

A well-made and sobering film if a little over-long.

I was glad to see that the film wasn't made using rotoscoping techniques (yeuch) but was actually properly animated using a heavily stylised, pseudo cel-shaded form of drawing, which I found helped the narrative along very intuitively.

The animation lends the earlier actions of the film the requisite amount of dreamlike solemnity without becoming hyper-real or disassociating the viewer and allows for some very natural-seeming hallucinatory sequences.

Towards the climax of the movie, where we find out just what was happening in Lebanon, the animation style remains the same but the colours become more stark to match the visuals themselves, and the reliance on metaphor is dropped as real-world horror enters the narrative more fully. The film ends with a powerful and sudden switch to documentary still-frame photography, which is all the more jarringly effective now that the almost comforting veil of animation has been removed; an abrupt reminder that the events in WALTZ WITH BASHIR actually happened, despite the narrative style chosen by the director.

While I do think this is a very accomplished work, the first half almost annoyed me, what with all the psycho-sexual pretention that was floating around (Ari Folman's older animated self even looks like Freud for goodness sake!).

At times the early sequences of WALTZ WITH BASHIR are reminiscent of Richard Linklater's philosophical pissings in WAKING LIFE, which (outside of an inspired narrative structure) features just about the most dreary hit-you-over-the-head-with-an-existential-hammer script I can think of (Example: "Dude, what if, like, dreams are real and it's waking life that's a dream?" Whoa, steady on there, mate; I haven't thought that since I was, oh, about 10? It's like Barry Stroud for pre-teen stoners).

Where was I?

Yes, so, get past the more throwaway postmodern musings and you are left with a very impressive and relevant piece of filmmaking which manages to document recent history and be genuinely affecting without seeming exploitative or crass.

Bravo!