Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir - Directed by Ari Folman - Rated R Chigurh found the story in this documentary compelling on its own, but the animation adds serious style that makes this a great film. Waltz with Bashir is the Israeli film about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. It’s really an animated documentary in which the director, Ari, tries to remember his involvement with the war in general and with two massacres specifically. The animation really sets this film apart and I found that it served the story quite well. It never came across as forced style or anything. The animation, for one, makes it much easier financially to recreate scenes of warfare. It also h elps to create a surreal feeling of war that brings up memories of classics like Apocalypse Now. I’m really at a loss trying to describe this film. My words cannot do the animation justice. It’s certainly not traditional animation and it’s not rotoscoping (a la A Scanner Darkly )....

Wow. What a dramatic, extraordinary, shocking film this is. It follows Ari Folman, the director, trying to piece together where he was during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, during the 1982 Lebanon War. He was 19 and serving in the IDF at the time, and in Beirut at the time of the massacre. As we follow him visiting old friends and slowly remembering, we eventually find that he was right there, with the IDF forces who prevented the Palestinians from leaving. The fim ends with real footage of the aftermath of the massacre. The first thing to say is that the animation, combined with stark, dark lighting, classical music and a mix of realistic and surrealist scenes, is absolutely outstanding- something I’ve never seen before, and judging from the reaction to the movie, something that there hasn’t been before. Secondly, I thought the ending was interesting- was the movement to real scenes from the conflict an admission that the animation didn’t...

A soldier dances through the mind-field of his past to exhume long dead memories as canine ghosts haunt him every night, barking their feral accusations into the deep recesses of his psyche. Writer/Director Ari Folman pursues his search for truth obscured by the miasma of time and guilt, his attempt to remember what he actually experienced during the 1982 Lebanon War. This beautiful animation lends a dream-like ethereal quality to Folman’s quest as he stumbles upon repressed memories that can only be coped with when human life is rendered in a cartoon world. Folman documents his meetings with friends and companions who fought beside him during the conflict and he pieces his jigsaw past together into a violent and coherent picture…and discovers that the truth, no matter how horrible, must be preserved and is the only way to keep from descending into insanity. The film is not a polemic (as some believe) concerning Israel’s responsibility for the Sabra and...

When Joe and I started this blog I never really thought about the kind of movies I'd be reviewing. Of course I considered doing silly, scathing reviews of movies like Transformers. Summer blockbusters, the easy stuff, the kind of movies that don't make you think or change your view of the world around you. I never considered serious movies and how I would go about beginning to understand them (after transformers I have to learn how to use my brain again because I shut it off for that flick.) Waltz With Bashir is the first serious drama I've seen all summer. Waltz With Bashir is the Story of the 1982 Isreali invasion of Lebanon and the directors experience there. After called to a bar by a wartime buddy of his, Ari Folman (the director) finds that he can't remember anything about his experience fighting in Lebanon. His friend relates to him how for about two years, almost ever night, he has the same dream. Twenty-six vicious dogs gather outside his apartment window and tell him...