Who would have thought that a documentary about a soldier's personal trip to discovery about himself and his role during the Christian Phalangist's massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila could best be presented in stark yet cool graphics animation? "Waltz with Bashir" does exactly that, surpassing my wildest expectations about what this movie was about. Ari Folman directs his own animated self in his quest to discover what happened to him during a most brutal massacre that he has all but repressed in his unconscious.
I have very vague ideas about the events surrounding the assassination of President Bashir Gemayel of Lebanon and the retaliatory violence it sparked against the Palestinians. My lack of knowledge about recent Middle Eastern history made the experience of this film very interesting, especially in the way the screenplay tackled the story. The artwork was very simple in its muted palette of colors, yet there is no denying that it was effective and even realistic. The musical score, which ranged from rock to new wave to classical, was very haunting. And words fail to describe what one feels during the point in the film when the distant comfort of animation makes a jolting return to reality in the last eight minutes.
As with all war movies I have seen, there had basically been one unifying message -- that war is senseless, and damaging to all concerned. "Waltz with Bashir" conveys this same massage in a most unique, and very memorably effective way. This did not win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for Israel last month. With such an excellent film like this losing, the more I am stoked to watch "Departures" from Japan which unexpectedly won the prize.
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