Waltz With Bashir

Waltz With Bashir, a film by Ari Folman, is most unusual. It is an animated documentary, or more precisely, a kind of memoir. Folman, at nineteen, was a member of the Israeli Defense Forces during a 1982 war with Lebanon, but after a conversation with a friend who is having nightmares over his participation in the war, realizes that he remembers little of what happened to him. He then sets about interviewing those he served with (as well as psychologists who deal with memory loss and trauma) to try to piece together what he went through.

The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, but didn't win, though most had it as a favorite. I wasn't surprised that it didn't win, and now that I've seen it I'm really not surprised, because it is so unusual. I don't think an animated film had ever been nominated in that category, and the animation in Waltz With Bashir isn't cuddly Disney-style. It is a curious amalgamation of graphic novels and those primitive cartoon shows of yesteryear, like Clutch Cargo, that used static backgrounds with cutouts suggesting movement. The animation, supervised by Yoni Goodman, may be primitive, but it manages to suggest volumes with just the slightest touch, such as when Folman's friend Boaz has the slightest twitch of guilt on his face when he confesses that he stole Folman's girlfriend back in the day. The animation also manages to convey the hallucinatory quality of fighting a war.

The film begins with the arresting image of vicious black dogs racing down a street, and there are many more indelible images, such as Folman's only initial memory of the conflict, when he and some fellow soldiers are bathing the Mediterranean outside Beirut when some flares illuminate the night sky, or an Israeli newsman walking down a road surrounded by gunfire while his cameraman crawls ahead of him.

The crux of Folman's angst is that he's troubled that he doesn't remember the details of a massacre that took place, perpetrated by Christian Lebanese in Palestinian refugee camps, prompted by the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel. By the end of the film he has recalled it, and ends with news footage of the event, in all its bloody horror.

As interesting as this film is, I felt a bit at arm's length from it. I think that's the nature of the topic--a memory surfacing as if it were a developing Polaroid. Also, the animation has a distancing effect, though it was an ingenious solution to a problem that would have otherwise required dry footage of talking heads, with maybe some re-enactment of war scenes by actors. Though it is not rotoscoping, some of the animation recalls those annoying brokerage ads you see on TV, where regular people are animated as they talk about their investments.

I've seen two of the nominated films, and I must say I found The Class much more involving, though Waltz With Bashir was a worthy nominee. Frankly I'm surprised that it wasn't nominated in the Best Animated Film category. It was leagues better than Kung Fu Panda, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb to gather that it's light years better than Bolt.