Waltz with Bashir is one of the best films of 2008. Plain and simple. It is also a landmark in the history of documentary film and one of the most emotionally arresting movies in recent memory. But as this film goes to great lengths to illustrate, memory can be more malleable and/or unreliable than we’d like to think.
Based on a true story, Waltz follows writer/director Ari Folman’s quest to recover missing memories from his service in Israel’s war with Lebanon in the 1980’s. An intense amount of psychological and emotional pressure is built up as the film progresses towards a confrontation with Israel’s role in the three day massacre of nearly 3,500 Palestinian civilians and refugees - men, women, children and the elderly – by Lebanese Phalangist militiamen in the camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut in 1982.
In the film’s opening scene, Boaz Rein-Buskila, Folman’s friend and a fellow veteran, relates a recurring nightmare wherein he is hunted down by a pack of feral dogs, the dogs of war. This story jogs in Folman a half-formed memory of the Sabra-Shatila massacre in which he and two friends are bathing in the sea at night in bombed-out Beirut under the yellow glow of flares. The three men rise slowly from the water, walk slowly to shore, slowly get dressed, and then enter the city, where they are overtaken by a crowd of wailing, disconsolate women. That’s when the memory ends.
Folman resolves to recover his missing memories, horrifying as they might be, by interviewing fellow veterans. In the process, he interrogates the nature of dreams and memories and their interface. Waltz explores how easily we create false events to fill gaps in our memories, especially violent ones and how in order to cope with violence we must shut it out, view it at a remove, through a lens, because if we are forced to confront it we must also confront its motives and, especially, our roles in it.
The haunting stories Folman uncovers are truly heart wrenching. They are viscerally recreated and often conjure startling levels of empathy and bring us closer to the traumatic effects of conflict than we are typically comfortable with.
As you may know by now, Waltz is an animated documentary. The unique visual aesthetic of the film, handled by Yoni Goodman, is at once gritty and resplendent. It portrays the horror of systematic genocide as confidently as it does the peace and beauty of a sun-drenched Lebanese orchard moments before an RPG attack.
Animation allows Folman to vividly recreate the dreams and memories that he collects. It also assures the viewer a certain amount of emotional protection: the film’s violence is translated into art, making it slightly more approachable. However, in a truly unforgettable and masterful turn, Folman removes that shield at the most critical moment.
Waltz is particularly important given Israel’s recent war with Gaza, because its message is one we never appear to be able to heed: the horror of history, if not clearly and frequently remembered, is doomed to be repeated.
