From the opening moments of marauding, snarling dogs to the final harrowing wails of widows, the animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir” is a thunderbolt, visually and emotionally provocative, arresting and riveting.
Director Ari Folman was a 19-year-old solider in the Israeli Defense Forces which invaded Lebanon in the summer of 1982. More than 20 years later, the unsettling dreams of Boaz Rein Buskila, a close friend and fellow solider, prompted the filmmaker to delve into his own murky memories of his war experience, and Folman quickly finds himself especially hounded by one particular, recurring dreamt moment. Told through the recollections of Folman, his military comrades, and the noted Israeli journalist, Ron Ben Yisahi, “Waltz with Bashir” is an eyewitness account of the Lebanese War and the army’s heedless complicity as the Lebanese Christian Phalangists massacred as many as 3,000 defenseless people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. It is a gripping view into the psychology of the after effects of the war experience. Concrete memory and hallucination coalesce, often tormentingly; and dreams stir before consciousness admits. All the soldiers seem shadowed by the Michel de Montaigne axiom that “nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
Each of the colleagues that Folman visits conveys a remarkable story of their war remembrances, from his buddy, Carmi Cnaa‘n, who moved to Holland and found untold wealth as a falafel distributor to Shmuel Frenkel, the patchouli-soaked martial arts devotee. But the episode chronicling the experience of Roni Dayg deserves special praise. Combining artistry and pathos in a soldier’s incredible story of survival and then massive survivor’s guilt, the scene begins in daylight as Roni escapes from his flaming tank in a hostile village battlefield until he musters an ingenious getaway by water at nightfall, only to subsequently become consumed by a pall of shame as the sole member of his unit spared. His story is dramatized seamlessly between the moods of the harrowing, in-your-face action and the serene, lovely underwater animation. There is a soulful, evocative air to much of the movie, which is ably accentuated by a luminous score from Max Richter.
The imagery created by the team led by director of animation Yoni Goodman is superlative; at times, the animation carries an almost 3-D intensity. In a scene illustrating exquisite detail, the camera moves through a lush grove as cautious soldiers, slivered with sunlight, scan for combatants who have just attacked their convoy, until, through a raft of thin trunks, they lock onto their attacker. Enhanced by a realistic quality and style, “Waltz with Bashir” is coated with a smoky, dusty, earthy viscosity.
“Waltz with Bashir” ends with a jarring, searing sequence — an indelible memory — and enters the pantheon of the most profound war films.
One Film Beyond 