Waltz With Bashir

In Waltz With Bashir Ari Folman's decision to animate the scenes being described in the same way he animates the present day interviews means they are so much more alive than any live-action dramatisation I've ever seen. If it's not the first time the technique (fully animated documentary) has been shown in film, it's definitely the first time I've seen it, and I hope I see it again.

It goes a long, long way to solving a problem with the use of re-creation in documantaries. In almost all cases I've seen in docos dramatisations lack drama, they actually lessen the impact of what is being told by showing sub-standard approximations. The approximations in Waltz With Bashir are as accurate as sniper fire.

On top of that there are images and sequences every bit as beautiful for their perfect simplicity as anything those beloved magicians at Pixar have shown me, and what the film says about not just memory but about the actions real men will take under the stresses of battle meant Waltz With Bashir is the most affecting movie I saw that was released in 2008.

Yeah, nicely said Alex. One of the things that give it so much resonance, for me at least, is the way a couple of the guys admit to being, not altogether cowardly, but something less than heroic in battle. You're not just getting recounted combat events from the stories these former soldiers are telling, you're being let in on the feelings they have about the way their 20 year old selves handled themselves in one of the most high stakes environments there is and because they're now stripped of the bravado of youth you get truths those 20 year old soldiers might very well not have told you. That we are given those 20 year old faces to go with the 45 year old faces and voices gives it (maybe ironically given the visual medium) more realism, more visceral punch.

One other thing I've been running over in my mind ("something you will mull over and think about for days" - you're dead right there) is that the ending does enough to counter Truffaut's argument that it's impossible to make an anti-war movie, because war invariably looks exciting onscreen. I don't know if he meant to include documentary in that but there seems no argument that everything until that real footage in Waltz With Bashir is beautiful in some way (save maybe the scene of the horses, which made me sick - but even that repulsive vista is rendered with an ugly elegance). It's not that the film glorifies war, but because the imagery is so well drawn and the colours so evocative, the film can't help but make it look cool.

The ending strips all that away when you finally arrive at it, lays bare the ugly, nightmarish, heartbreaking truth. And in doing so it crystalizes the preceding 89 animated minutes as starkly real and without glory.

That's true enough from a certain point of view but could be interpreted as saying the animated nature of the film couches the stories in some kind of safety padding. I'm pretty sure that's not what you're saying but I don't want anyone to misunderstand this point.

While a cartoon is never as real as real footage would be, in the absence of real footage Ari Folman chose complete* animation over dramatisation or fictionalisation or talking heads or any combination of those and it works more effectively than any of those other approaches could have**. Because the interviews themselves are animated it elevates the recreations, it places them in the same world.

True, cartoon, no matter how it's presented is still not real. But even before that final minute it's powerful stuff, it's packed with truth. The ending, while it strips away any sense of the coolness of the tanks and rocket launchers and grenades, it doesn't strip away the truth of what we've seen, it doesn't make the animated scenes seem fake by contrast with that final scene's reality. What is does is bring the truth*** in those animated scenes that make up the story of the film into the real world, where war isn't thrilling or beautiful.


*As opposed to animating only parts of the film in combination with talking heads or something.

** That's not to say the other approaches couldn't make a good film, just that the way Folman has made this film gives it strengths that even the best writers and actors couldn't. When you're watching Eric Bana in Munich for example, true story or not, you end up knowing you've watched Eric Bana. When you've watched Waltz With Bashir, with the visual story illuminated by the voices of the real people, you feel like you've really seen them in action.

*** And it's a human truth I'm talking about, not necessarily the truth of the action in the accounts themselves. Apart from the fact that halucinations and dreams are shown which didn't really happen, the film lets us know that memory is not wholly to be trusted. That the events happened at all is acknowledged history, and that the men are willing to lay at least some of their flaws bare points to the accounts being honest tellings of their memories, but we know even as we listen we should never completely trust even the most honestly accounted memories.


Fuck this film is so good.

It has similarities but Waltz With Bashir is a different kind of beast. It's documentary, voiced (in all but two cases) by the people in the story. The two stand-in actors that are used read from transcripts of the interviews, so the film is told from several accounts and part of the power of it is that you know you're hearing the voices of the people who were taking part.

Persepolis is an autobiography but is played all from one person's perspective and played by actors. It's far more conventional than Waltz With Bashir in that respect.