Ambrose Iu

Waltz with Bashir, an animation directed by Ari Folman, depicts Ari Folman, a soldier in the Isreal defense forces and his quest, inspired by a recurring dream, to find out what had happened on the night of the Sabra and Shatile Massacre. Throughout the film, the audience sees Folman revisiting and interviewing former comrades and participants in the war. In the final 50 seconds of the film, the viewers are bombarded, thrown into the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatile Massacre by footage filmed at that time.

Continue reading →

Heather Choi

As the first ever feature-length animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir (2008) recounts director Ari Folman’s quest to uncover his memories of the role he played 20 years prior in the 1982 Lebanon War. Plagued by his inability to recall any of the events from the time he spent as an Israeli soldier, Folman enlists the help of his old military friends to discover the truth. During his journey, he faces many obstacles that take a toll on his mental state (primarily his memory). Aside from these narrative setbacks, the movie grapples with some greater problems that come in the form of binaries: between the real and the surreal, truth and fabrication, and guilt and innocence. Throughout the film, Waltz with Bashir walks a fine line, dancing back and forth between these conflicting themes. However, the message ultimately becomes clear that the correct path lies in reality, truth and acceptance of one’s own guilt, and the film – in its creation, script, mise en scene, and overall artistic aesthetic – serves as an analogous representation that enhances this viewpoint.

The three main binaries in this film are all interwoven, yet function in distinctive ways. The real versus surreal binary contrasts the events that occurred in real life to the idealized version of reality displayed in the movie, since the latter manages to mask many of the horrors of war through its medium of animation. Instead of using more live footage or making a documentary composed solely of found materials, Folman makes the cinematic choice to romanticize events and blur the distinction between facts and imagination by creating a visual consistency for both reality and fantasy.

Continue reading →

Domitille Colin

Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir first stands out to us because of its use of animation despite its identification as a documentary film– how can a non-fiction narrative be justly portrayed using highly stylised illustration? Yet it is evident by the end that the medium of animation not only allows the viewer to easily cross over any visual and temporal boundaries but also turns around and forces the boundary to be redrawn in a harsh awakening. Thus the documentary footage, hallucinations and flashbacks can all be presented on the same visual plane, that is, until the film’s final clip. Similarly, the characters themselves are enveloped in their own safety nets of self-induced amnesia and coping mechanisms that at once shield them from PTSD symptoms but also help to propagate them.

An essential manifestation of these protective mechanisms are the hallucinations that plague many of the characters and exist in a halfway point between memory and dreamscape. Among these hallucinations is the reoccurring motif of the sea and its role as a protection from enemies and a shield from reality. The sea manifests itself in three key scenes, Ari Folman’s first hallucination of the beach, Carmi Cna’an’s dream of the woman, and Ronny Dayag’s escape at sea. These three all reveal the sea to be a place of escape and protection, as Dayag states, a place of “fear [and] feelings.”

Continue reading →

David Tong

Ari Folman’s masterpiece Waltz with Bashir is a film that blends a number of genres together. Despite being in the documentary genre, the film itself is a blend of reality, imagination, and hallucinations. This leads to the question: What is Folman’s animated, fictionalized, docu-autobiography? Its ability to capture so many elements from being a war memoir, to a piece of investigative journalism, to being an artistic creation constructed for self-therapy provides the film life. Its ability to move between dimensions and emotions makes it a film that is both compelling to watch and worth comprehending. Perhaps one of the most important concepts of the film is the transcendence of reality.

From the very first shot, the viewer is exposed to a number of elements that question dimensional reality.

Continue reading →