Waltz with Bashir

Orginally published in the film issue of SOMA

In the summer of 1982, Israeli soldiers invaded Southern Lebanon with the intent of “stabilizing” the civil-war-torn country used as a strategic missile range in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. As Israeli forces waited to enter the capital city of Beirut, a treaty was signed between Israel and Palestinians stating that if PLO combatants were sent by ship to Tunisia, Israeli’s would remove the threat of a surge on Beirut. In the midst of this delicate cease-fire, Lebanese president elect (and Sharon favorite), Phalangist militia leader Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated while giving a speech in East Beirut. In an orgy of retaliatory violence, Phalangists stormed the refugee camps of West Beirut to avenge the death of their beloved leader. As is all too often the case with military blood debts, the victims of the brutal massacre that ensued in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila were exclusively civilians, many of them children and elderly.

Fast forward twenty-five years to two former soldiers sitting in a bar. Ari Folman, a documentary filmmaker, has been summoned by his friend, Boaz Rein Buskila. Visions of war have crept into the soulful accountant’s dreams. But Buskila is not plagued by apparitions of fallen soldiers or decimated battle fields. Twenty-six dogs have been chasing him since he left occupied territory, and they’ve finally tracked him down at his office. Because he had difficulty killing people, Buskila was assigned to shoot barking dogs. And he remembered each and every one he shot.

Unlike Boaz, Ari remembers nothing. But after leaving his friend, a solitary recollection of wartime comes flooding back to him a dream. Three soldiers awaken in the ocean, illuminated by flares from above. As they head into the devastated streets of Beirut, grief stricken Palestinian survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres swarm around them in a hallucinatory procession.

Folman’s encounter with Buskila and the sole memory it elicits provided the impetus for his feature length animated documentary, Waltz With Bashir. Waltz follows Folman as he attempts to unravel Israel’s role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and by extension his own involvement. He interviews old war buddies, acclaimed war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai, and a psychologist in his quest to locate and understand his missing memories. Untraditional as it may seem, Folman felt that animation was the only way to tell his story. And he’s right. In many ways, Waltz is a story without images. At least photographic images. According to Folman, very little decent archival footage of the first Lebanese War exists, and even if it did, news reel footage and army generals couldn’t begin to tell Folman’s story . With its focus on the spaces between memory, forgetting is a vital aspect of Waltz’s story. As is the dynamic nature of memory; At least three different animation styles and color palettes are used to evoke its ambiguity.

Waltz with Bashir is Folman’s third feature film and his second animated work. He experimented with the form in the animated introductory sequences for The Material that Love is Made Of, a documentary series made for Israeli television about the substance of love, based on American chemist Helen Fisher’s discovery that love is actual hormonal matter. Though the bold visual style that Folman honed in Waltz With Bashir is evident in its germinal stages in Material, his early animation cleverly riffs off of animated educational shorts, while Waltz mines the medium’s capacity for pathos (which is heightened by experimental composer Max Richter’s original score). Although Waltz’s casual format of folks sitting around talking about issues like dreams, repression and memory have prompted many to draw comparisons to Richard Linklater’s animated jaw-fest Waking Life, Waltz was drawn using a mixture of Flash, 3D and traditional animation techniques, rather than the rotoscoping used for Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. A favorite at the Cannes and New York Film Festivals, the film is a Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and an official Academy Award entry for Best Animated Feature and Best Foreign Language Film.

Folman does not wield the documentary form as a pedagogical tool, nor does he create a comprehensive contextual framework for the viewer to understand Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He shuns traditional documentary’s fixation on experts and verisimilitude, which can desensitize viewers. By positing war at a dreamlike distance, Folman brings its atrocity closer. “War is so surreal,” Folman says, “and memory is so tricky that I thought I had better take the journey with the help of very fine illustrators.” The personal is political in Waltz with Bashir; In focusing on the non-linear and oft fantastical stories of fellow Israeli soldiers, Folman resists using documentary in the service of an official history, instead delving into the highly subjective and fragmentary testimonials of his peers. Waltz With Bashir impressively navigates the cross-currents of anguish, fantasy and war, all the while reminding us through the veil of post-traumatic reverie that war’s vagaries are very, very real.