Ten minutes in to Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, it’s easy to see why this animated documentary was the talk of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Ten minutes in to Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, it’s easy to see why this animated documentary was the talk of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
There’s simply never been a film quite like it; its clean, almost rotoscoped lines masking a tale of brutal horror as Folman takes us on a journey into the dark heart of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. And yet, though routed in the past, as Bashir reveals a country struggling to come to terms with the psychic damage wrought by war in the Middle East, it could scarcely be more relevant today.
On June 6, 1982, the Israeli Defence Forces advanced into Southern Lebanon, wading into a civil war that had been ignited by religious differences and fuelled by one atrocity after another. But for all that its images of violence are harrowing and direct, Bashir isn’t a film about war per se – it’s an exploration of the permanent marks that violence can leave, not just on the body of the victims, but on the minds of the victors.
Folman, who was only a teenager when he went to war, was provoked by the nightmares of a friend. He realised that he, too, had a recurring, cryptic dream related to his experiences, whose meaning was locked somewhere inside his subconscious, along with his memories. His journey into his own psyche takes us back into the folds of history, ending at the gates of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, and the shattering horrors that took place there.
But there are other, more curious memories in the mix. While the anarchic hedonism and black humour of the soldiers recall Apocalypse Now, their fragile, half-naked bodies and empty eyes are also strangely reminiscent of other emaciated Jews at Auschwitz and Belsen – the horrific history of the fathers that somehow gave way to the crimes of their sons.
Waltz with Bashir isn’t about politics or blame, however. It’s about the dehumanising tar of hate. As such, it’s an urgent, compelling film that isn’t sidetracked by the tired dichotomies of the region. Credit, too, to David Polonsky’s art direction and Max Richter’s funereal score, which hangs over the film like a veil. This is grown up filmmaking that demands and deserves grown up engagement from its public. Let’s hope it gets it because this is utterly essential viewing.
The film’s great achievement is to be overwhelming without ever becoming manipulative.
Genuinely outstanding. Could be a landmark film.
Genuinely outstanding. Could be a landmark film.
