Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Waltz With Bashir (2008) 8/10
Very often, our reaction to film is affected by when we watch it. The point in time in which we watch a movie may well determine how we react to it. If i had watched United 93 or Man on Wire in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, my opinions of these films may very well be different (both are good films in any case). I watched Waltz in Bashir, a film about the 1982 Lebanese War and it is impossible not to think about Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip this year. That alone gives the film a greater sense of pathos that it may not otherwise have had. It a film about a past conflict that remains as topical for us today as it was decades ago. And it presents to us a most disturbing message, and if i may borrow a line from Joe Morgenstern: “Wars are fought, the film tells us, then literally forgotten.”
Waltz in Bashir is presented as an animated film. It is not a cartoon and it is not for kids. It can best be describe as a animated semi-documentary, but that is a label that does the film great disservice. 2008 has been a year where genre films have broken free of the confines of their genre and achieved something almost transcendental, like The Dark Knight for superhero movies and WALL-E for animation. Waltz with Bashir is a stunning accomplishment in both animation and documentary and it utilizes the medium to tell a story in a way that could not have been possible in any other manner. Visually the film is a beautiful pastiche of colors but while the imagery impresses, it is the story that lingers long after you have watched it.
The film is a forceful, mesmerizing and utterly devastating pean on war and memory. In its final scene when it cuts from animation to real stock footage, the full force of its arguments hits you in the gut. It is an argument that we cannot stay passive, that we cannot hide behind the shield of ignorance when atrocities are committed. Waltz With Bashir has already won the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Golden Globes and is in the running for Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars. Made by an Israeli filmmaker, Waltz with Bashir forces us to look into the darker side of humanity and perhaps as Nietzsche suggests, As we peer into the abyss, the abyss also looks into us. Waltz with Bashir is one of the best films of 2008. Don’t miss it.
“One of the most profoundly explosive animated documentaries I have ever seen, and is clearly one of the best pictures of the year.”- New York Observer
“Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” is an absolute stunner, a feature-length animated documentary, from Israel, in which the force of moving drawings amplifies eerily powerful accounts of war, shaky remembrance and rock-solid repression.”- Wall Street Journal
“”Bashir” is a thinking person’s horror movie, about real horror and horrifying echoes”- Washington Post
