A history of violence

Animated Israeli documentary Waltz
With Bashir is a fascinating, tragic
exploration of memory and the past

ROTOSCOPIC RECOLLECTIONS: Waltz With Bashir

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s hard to talk about Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir without at least mentioning Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis, from earlier this year. Both revisit the violent Middle Eastern conflicts of the 1980s through highly personal storytelling that illuminates the impact of big, historical changes on the everyday lives of the regular people caught up in revolution, uprisings and war. It’s a simple approach, very effective and very humanist—and, in both cases, the fact that the stories are presented via animation amplifies their universality.

But, nationality and gender aside, the biggest difference between the two films is that while Persepolis was an autobiographical coming-of-age story, Bashir is of a different genre entirely. Folman has characterized it as an “animated documentary,” and that’s essentially what it is, comprised of interviews and recreated recollections.

It’s literally a journey of self-discovery for Folman, who is the film’s protagonist. One night, he’s woken by an old friend, who tells him he’s haunted by nightmares of the dogs he killed while stationed with the Israeli army in the early ’80s during the country’s invasion of Lebanon. This leads Folman to question why he has no personal recollection of the period, a time when he too was a soldier.

Interviewing friends from the period, Folman gets closer and closer to the central point—his guilt over his and his country’s passive complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, when Christian Phalangist militias killed hundreds of Palestinians in refugee camps in retaliation for the assassination of Bashir Gemayel while the Israeli Defence Forces basically sat by and watched.

Through the use of rotoscopic animation (similar to that used in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life, only much more effective), haunting, poetic imagery and a truly excellent soundtrack, Folman has created something very special. It’s an exploration of guilt, memory and national consciousness that offers no explanations or pat consolations; in fact, the movie’s ending seems designed to undercut that sort of conclusion, and the film’s own striking beauty as well. This is a strange choice to open the day after Christmas but a fascinating and original film that should be seen regardless.