Waltz With Bashir
Banned for being an Israeli product, the number one bootleg DVD in Lebanon is Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary of the 1982 war. This film that I had never heard of has won many awards, including the Golden Globe for best foreign film and is also nominated for an Oscar in the same category. Upon reading about the movie I decided that I had to see it and behold, La Jolla Village is screening the film.
The documentary traces the memory recall of film director Ari Folman as he tries to remember where he was in 1982 in the war. The interviewees are real people who were also in Lebanon and many of them have partial memories or untold stories that need to be heard. The names are real but in some cases, the faces are changed to protect them from recognition. This story probably could have only been told in animation.
This is a war movie from the soldiers point-of-view. The telling is almost dispassionate and detached after two decades of removal from the events. I’m sure both Israeli and Lebanese see what is inaccurate or spin in the telling but from an outsider’s look, I found this the perfect method to learn a tiny bit more about the troubled relations between these two countries. In the end, Waltz With Bashir is about people, not governments.
The film is either not rated or NC-17, for violence and pornography. (A general is watching a porn movie when a soldier arrives. Oddly, no swearing. Some drug use. While animated throughout, the end switches to actual footage of the massacre at the Palestinian Camp that is the main topic of the documentary. This puts you back in the reality and is probably why the ending is impactful enough to stay with the audience and bring in the awards.
http://waltzwithbashir.com/home.html
The documentary traces the memory recall of film director Ari Folman as he tries to remember where he was in 1982 in the war. The interviewees are real people who were also in Lebanon and many of them have partial memories or untold stories that need to be heard. The names are real but in some cases, the faces are changed to protect them from recognition. This story probably could have only been told in animation.
This is a war movie from the soldiers point-of-view. The telling is almost dispassionate and detached after two decades of removal from the events. I’m sure both Israeli and Lebanese see what is inaccurate or spin in the telling but from an outsider’s look, I found this the perfect method to learn a tiny bit more about the troubled relations between these two countries. In the end, Waltz With Bashir is about people, not governments.
The film is either not rated or NC-17, for violence and pornography. (A general is watching a porn movie when a soldier arrives. Oddly, no swearing. Some drug use. While animated throughout, the end switches to actual footage of the massacre at the Palestinian Camp that is the main topic of the documentary. This puts you back in the reality and is probably why the ending is impactful enough to stay with the audience and bring in the awards.
http://waltzwithbashir.com/home.html
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