Movie review and director interview: Waltz with Bashir

by Alex Bentley

Documentaries have taken almost any form of film one can imagine. Much to the chagrin of purists, the term “documentary” can encompass anything from nature films (little, if any, manipulation of events) to Michael Moore films (lots of manipulation) to this year's Man on Wire, which included actors recreating different scenes from a person's life.

It is in the latter style with which Waltz with Bashir shares the most in common, though in a form that 99% of filmgoers have probably never seen. Director Ari Folman wanted to make a documentary about what seemed to be missing memories of his stint fighting in the Lebanon War in 1982. However, he didn't want to just conduct bland interviews with his colleagues from that time and intersperse them with various pictures and news footage.

Folman hit upon the idea to make an animated documentary, so that the stories that he and his colleagues told wouldn't just lie there but would instead come alive on the screen, literally illustrating for the audience what their memories were. The animation tends to give the film a dreamlike quality, but never for a minute does that make it any less real. The result is unlike any feature length animated film ever made – harrowing, heartbreaking, and most definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Folman's quest to recover his “missing” memories starts with a conversation with a friend who relates to him a dream in which he's haunted by 26 dogs, the exact number he killed during the war. Folman says that he doesn't have any similar haunting dreams, despite being a witness to one of the worst massacres of the war.

Desperate to find out why this is, he consults a friend who also happens to be a psychiatrist, who encourages him to seek out his fellow soldiers to get their perspectives. Each stop gives Folman a bit more insight, while the accompanying animated sequences give the audience more than just an eyeful of the horrors of war. Folman doesn't skimp on the details, making sure to show each explosion or gun battle and all the carnage they wreak.

The film's title refers to an event in one of the stories when a group of soldiers finds out that the newly-elected president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, had been killed. Throwing caution to the wind, one soldier charges across a road, shooting almost blindly while dancing in circles, i.e. waltzing. Believable or not, it helps to give a broader context to the feelings and actions of many of the Israeli soldiers.

In fact, that may be the biggest accomplishment of Waltz with Bashir – whether one is familiar with the Lebanon War or not, the understanding of a soldier's mentality one can gain from listening to these men's stories is staggering. Rarely has the senselessness and brutality of war been portrayed more vividly.

I sat in on a round table interview with Ari Folman, the director and star of Waltz with Bashir, on December 8 at the Rosemont Crescent Hotel in Dallas. Folman was at the tail end of a long press junket day and had other things on his mind (a football -- soccer -- game back home, for one), but was still generally engaging. A few of the highlights:

* Why he chose to make an animated documentary rather than a traditional one

* Why revisiting the horrific war memories was somewhat of a relief

* How the film being the first full-length animated documentary didn't help him raise money to make the film

* How the animation is a much different technique than rotoscope (a la Waking Life or those annoying commercials)

* Why he considers the film to be universal despite being about the Lebanon War

* Why being lauded by the Israeli government for the film is hard to get used to