NYFF. Waltz with Bashir.

Waltz with Bashir [site], the animated memoir directed by Ari Folman, is once again testing whether audiences will respond to animation if it doesn't deal with outer space or talking animals (see my recent piece on Bill Plympton, Bashir and other animated things in the Wall Street Journal).

It's challenging enough that Waltz with Bashir is dealing with memory of war and serious emotions - even more challenging that it takes its characters and the audience back to the nightmarish Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and to the Sabra and Shatila massacres committed by Phalangist militias against the Palestinians who lived in those refugee camps. (Even more troubling that Israel invaded Lebanon again in 2006). Israeli troops who controlled the territory were present as the Phalangists entered the camp in 1982, and witnessed the killings without intervening. The film suggests that Israel had an even greater role.

Updated through 10/10.

Let's not forget that cartoonish images of war aren't new. They were a small American industry, beginning in World War II, and long after that, when Sgt Rock and Sgt Fury were marketed all over the US. Were sergeants and enlisted grunts the heroes of these comics because the marketers thought their low-ranking heroes had a populist appeal? I can just hear it now: "Officers don't read comic books." Let's hope that they look at Folman's film, which seems to be indicating that it could have a following in the US.

After the press screening, Folman was asked whether he thought his film about his own journey to recover the memories of that war was political. No, he said, calling it a personal film, and stressing that if it had been a political film, the film that he spent four years making might not have been received so favorably by Israelis from all over the political map. Bear in mind that, after a world premiere at Cannes (with no awards - try figuring out that one), the film premiered in Israel, not at the Jerusalem Film Festival, but at a cinematheque in the town of Sderot, near Gaza, where the audience included settlers and ex-settlers - not the kind of public that might be expected to share a former soldier's guilt about his country's role in the murder of Palestinians.

Folman has frequently discussed the experience in interviews, and here's what he said to me over the phone from Israel (a few hours before the film swept up nearly all the major Ophir Awards, Israel's equivalent of the Oscars): "[There were] a lot of right wing people, a pretty different audience than here in Tel Aviv. It's when I realized for the first time that there would not be any political debate regarding the film, and I was very surprised. Why did I ever think that there would be? Sometimes we underestimate the audience. We think that we are aiming for a very personal autobiographical film, but they will see it as political film. But they saw it exactly as I planned it. The only criticism I got here at all was from the left side of the political spectrum, saying that the film didn't show enough guilt for what happened in the camps. And I didn't expect that."

Folman has said that his life changed dramatically after the film, since people whom he never met before now trap him in a corner wherever he goes and tell him their horrific war stories.

Did Waltz with Bashir succeed in uniting Israelis around the horror of their recollections of what the experience of war was for them? "A lot of people told me that the most symbolic shot for them, that lightened up their memories [sic], was this very banal shot of the armed vehicle, going toward the sunset, shooting everywhere. This is their war story. It's a really common memory. No matter where you're going, you're frightened to death, so you just shoot."

A common question Folman hears is whether he should have included Palestinian testimony in the film. Balance, he said, was not what he sought in this personal film, and he urged Palestinians to make their own films about the 1982 experience and the occupation that followed. I think he's right. The search for balance, famous in American journalism, creates a false harmony of views and experiences, the sense that what's presented is fair. Fair and accurate is the better standard. You come out of Waltz with Bashir with the sense that the recollections are accurate, at least accurate for those who remember them.

That said, the footage of the victims' corpses at the end of the film raises persistent questions about the "validity" of live-action images as opposed to animated ones. Folman says he was always determined to end his film with footage of the dead, but still had no persuasive answer as to why it was so important to him. Let's just say that when all is remembered and discussed, facts are still stubborn things. And these images were the facts.

All the more troubling then, was Israel's decision to invade Lebanon in 2006, a huge blunder which killed innocent people, destroyed Lebanon's infrastructure, boosted the profile of the Hezbullah fighters whom Israel wanted to defeat, and showed that the Israel military was fallible and not invincible. Had the now-disgraced Israeli leaders who pushed for the invasion (with lots of popular support and US encouragement) forgotten the toll of the long occupation that began in 1982? For another reality check, read in Ha'aretz that the Israelis are now scrapping the American cluster bombs that are now strewn all over southern Lebanon for a more efficient explosive. All the more reason to revisit the memories exhumed in Waltz with Bashir.

- David D'Arcy

"How does one avoid overly aestheticizing violence when using animation?" asks Michael Koresky in Reverse Shot. "Despite a radical, unified look, the imagery in Waltz with Bashir ranges from the mundane to the dreamlike, and often those distinctions collapse, expand, and mutate right before our eyes. Folman isn't gussying up a difficult chapter of history in accessible pop extravagance; rather he's using a new form to investigate the terrible persistence, not to mention unreliability, of memory and perception, and how personal and political deceptions often go hand in hand."

Nick Schager in Slant: "The way the human psyche denies, mutates and embellishes as a means of coping with extremity - and guilt, even of merely abetting - is a topic the director intimately understands, but Waltz with Bashir makes its point early on and then restates repeatedly and, when the action shifts to back-and-forth chats between Folman and pals, quite drearily."

"Waltz for Bashir dramatizes the horror and insanity of war in images that gracefully glide between the mundane and outrageously bizarre," writes Jürgen Fauth.

Interviews with Folman: Kevin Kelly (SpoutBlog) and Dina Kraft (Voice).

As Yair Raveh notes, this is Israel's contender in the Foreign Language Oscar race.

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes.

Updates, 10/7: "This is a film that stacks its deck just a bit too heavily," writes Ed Champion. "War is bad, and it doesn't matter what side you're on.... Waltz is, however, very good about clarifying something just as troubling: more than two decades later, it cannot be stated with any certainty that war memories match up to the reality."

Online viewing tip. IFC has video of the press conference.

Update, 10/9: "There's something tremendously brave about Waltz with Bashir," writes Jenny Jediny at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "Folman draws out the political, but at the expense of the personal, exposing ugliness that many would want buried with them at their grave. Shame, however, is the source of many great stories, and in sharing his past Folman finds more than atonement - he revives history and its horrors for those unable to speak, both then and now."

Update, 10/10: "Among the more provocative films to unspool at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's signature event is Ari Folman's shocking Waltz with Bashir, a film that single-handedly restores my faith in the possibilities of the animated film," writes Brandon Harris.

Posted by dwhudson at October 5, 2008 5:40 AM