Abstract
Ari Folman is the author and director of the Israeli animated documentary film, Waltz with Bashir, that came out in 2008. The film is remarkable for its distinctive style of animation and reflection over personal memory. It is the first documentary told and animated in this unique fashion. Folman uncovers the reflections of loss and the intricacies of war. The film looks closely into events of the Lebanon war, and from the angle of the participants, casts the psychological consequences of war. Waltz with Bashir, like any other historical documentary covers a lot of introspection and emotions.
The film, begins with a friend of the film director, Boaz Rein-Buskila, who narrates a very weird and frightening dream where he is being hunted down by a pack of 26 vicious dogs. This dream sequence sets off a chain of thoughts in the mind of Ari Folman. It is his personal memory that he is trying to remember the most during 1982 in the Lebanon War, and that is during the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The discovery sends Folman on a mission to regain his erased recollections of that time.Folman interviews alongside the comrades, psychologists, journalists and people who knew him from that epoch in time in an effort to construct the true events that transpired. Each of these conversations represents a brain of the greater puzzle, and this puzzle is not only the events that have transpired, but the psychological and the emotional distress that came along with it. With the emergence of the memories, it is from an alive perspective that the film traverses through slumber, delusions, flashbacks, and real memories.
The most notable of these is that memories are not presented in a canonical format, but are absorbed in a veil of complexity. The film does not seek to provide a documentary of the events that have taken place, but instead aims to study the very act of remembering and the complex emotions of trauma that are intertwined, closing with the guilt. In the conclusive moments of the film, the animation dramatically reduces, and real footage takes its place, aiding in the real world causation of its previously abstract thoughts.
The Cast and Crew
The film takes a new approach toward depicting animation as it employs real people to vocalize characters, thus enhancing its documentary like realism. The film is constructed around real interviews with the people and this blurs the boundaries between performance and reality.
Ari Folman: Director, writer, and the primary character whom the story revolves around; he narrates and self-portrays as the documentaries protagonist. Folman is a contemporary Israeli filmmaker who intertwines a personal story within a more substantial and mainstream narrative.
Ron Ben-Yishai: An experienced war journalist participant who exhorts the essence and conditions of the war and the aftermath.
Dror Harazi: One of Folman’s interviewees who, as a former soldier, provides dramatic accounts of the battlefield and is one of the key narrators in the attempt to understand the film’s primary theme of memory.
Ori Sivan: One of the closest to Folman, who is also a prominent director and writer, aims to aid Folman in introspective self critique.
Boaz Rein-Buskila: The very first character to whom the story is told, and one of the dreamers. His dream is the anchor to which the story is tied. His bewilderment and fragility represent the dominant feelings of the movie.
In collaboration with Yoni Goodman, the film’s visual aesthetics were simplified with the use of Flash Animation and traditional animation. The animation of the film was a team from the studio, the Bridgit Folman Film Gang, which aimed to achieve a distinctive look of the film; painterly, surreal, and emotionally resonant.
The score of the film is beautifully sorrowful and moving at the same time and is composed by British composer, Max Richter. The film is very well done and the music helps the film during the more emotional and introspective moments and parts of the film. The music greatly helps the film during the more emotional and introspective parts.
IMDB Ratings and Critical Reception
The film Wlatz with Bashir is very well received and has an impressive rating of 8.0/10, indicating that the film has received both positive reviews and acceptance from the public. The film has received positive reviews for the outstanding animated direction and the strong emotion it incorporates into the animation, along with the powerful themes and storytelling.
The critics of the film believe that the film is the most innovative for the use of animation while tackling trauma and memory in real life. Rather than using animation as a form of fantasy and escapism, Folman uses animation as a tool to depict the internal psyche of a person who is trying to decipher her own thoughts in the midst of chaos and un-recollection. This method helps the audience to feel a stronger connection with the emotional mindscape of the characters instead of passively observing the characters reenacting historical events.
Numerous reviewers have said that the film Waltz with Bashir aims neither at providing a conclusive narrative of the Lebanon War nor at laying the blame. Rather, it is profoundly personal, concentrating, in this case, not on the war as such, but on the feelings of the participants, the psychology that endures in the decades that follow, and the war’s haunting legacy. This willingness to go to the personal level helps to explain the film’s universal impact, not restricted, as one might think, only to viewers conversant with the particular war, but to anyone who has been touched by the tragedy of warfare.
It had considerable success, winning numerous awards and distinctions, such as the:
Best Foreign Language Film of the Golden Globe Awards
César for Best Foreign Film
Best Director at the Ophir Awards
Nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
It was also the film that Israel put forth as its entry to the Academy Awards for that year. Although it did not win the Oscar, its nomination was a landmark in the history of animated documentaries and in the world of film.
Conclusion
As with all the other animated documentaries this one too is a first of its kind. Waltz with Bashir is an extraordinary work that combines the serenity of meditation with the complexity of memory and identity. Peering beyond the ordinary boundaries of a documentary and war film, it intimately examines the emotional weight that such contradictions inflict on a soul long after the last shot has been fired. The film’s vivid imagery, powerful score, and strikingly honest commentary make for a compelling atmosphere that the audience cannot easily shake off.
Director Ari Folman gallantly places himself at the center of this story not for the sake of self glorification, but rather to reminds us of the ever elusive nature of memory and the primal urge of man to decipher the past. His journey is more self fathoming than it is heroic, as it boils down to questioning, and eventually coming to terms with certain things.
In a world where stories of conflict are told with a sense of bravado or are glossed over, Waltz with Bashir is a rare, deeply humane, and inward looking exception. It is still, a brilliant case of how animation can be a tool for facts, and how the past more times than not, serves as the basis for catharsis.
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