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Waltz with Bashir is an animated take on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon from a filmmaker who was on the frontlines
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While some animated independent features for adults have made it big in the last few decades (from Fritz the Cat back in the 70s to the recent critical hit Persepolis), Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is something relatively new—an animated documentary.
While docs like Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen’s The Kid Stays in the Picture and Morgen’s Chicago 10 used animation in place of archival footage that didn’t exist, Folman’s film is one that uses the medium to explore the intense and surreal memories of war. Folman was in the Israeli Army during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a period that included the infamous massacres of Palestinians by Christian Phalangist militias, and Bashir is partly an intensely personal journey into the lost memories of Folman and other soldiers he was with at that time.
Folman has said that he employed this innovative form largely because simply telling his story on a black background with no supporting footage would be boring. Regardless, the animated style of Bashir has left audiences at Cannes and other festivals in awe of the beautiful and evocative style it uses to tell a story of war and memory. That style, according to Folman, was first invented in the illustration team’s studio using a combination of Flash animation, classic animation and 3D. While the film’s 2300 plus animated illustrations were drawn from scratch, Bashir was first shot as a real video with real people—many of whom were fellow soldiers with Folman giving their testimonies of what happened—and then scripted out and storyboarded based on the video. The result is a film that is highly original. It’s a poignant essay on how the mind can suppress the experiences that shape us and, most importantly, an anti-war movie from someone who was in the thick of it. As Folman said in an interview, “I’ve come to one conclusion: War is so useless that it’s unbelievable…Just very young men going nowhere, shooting at no one they know, getting shot by no one they know, then going home and trying to forget. Sometimes they can. Most of the time they cannot.”
(Premiering December 26th)