Waltz With Bashir

I saw this tonight. It's an 'animated documentary' about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon - a time and place I need to know more about. It's unlike anything I've seen before (it looks like Sin City a bit). I found it very affecting. It's the structure that's thrown me most. Although it's about the war and particularly the massacres in the refugee camps, it's really about the construction of memory from images, and the construction of reality from pieces of reality - which is a pretty brave thing in a war film, for two reasons: it eliminates the usual hero narrative; and it absolves pretty much everyone of responsibility because war is war. Right now it strikes me as about the opposite of every war film I've ever seen, other perhaps The Fog of War. It was excellent.

preview for this running in front of Synecdoche, NY - kinda piqued my interest

looks WAY fucking better than Sin City, even just on a visual level

I saw it last week--I found it very affecting, very powerful, but strangely it's not crossed me mind since I walked out of the theatre.

Anyway, yeah, go see it if you haven't, it's definitely a great piece of work. Wayyyyyyyyyyy better than Sin City (tho I hated Sin City).

Animation looks like it's similar to the french sci-fi animi from a couple of years ago whose name escapes me. . . think Daniel Craig did the English dub so I'll look for it that way.

Ah it was called Renaissance.

this has been out in australia for a couple months on limited release and got real raves, i've still not seen it yet though. apparently the director hit on the idea of animating it partly because several of the people he interviewed were uncomfortable with being on-camera or having their own voices used. it was done as a video doco first, then the interview parts were re-drawn and mixed with the flashback animations.

(saw this at the weekend) there's a bit when he's talking to his friend carmi in holland and is told "its ok to draw but not to film". i think the issue of representing an event like this mentally and cinematically is what is most interesting and is handled quite delicately i think. the effect at the end is really brutal. the more i look back on it the more i realise i enjoyed this. my friend found the max richter offputting but i though it didn't get in the way.

please ignore my subconscious syntax sabotage. i thought it treated the audience pretty smartly too regarding the subject matter, it doesn't spend much time explaining but i was able to follow as someone who knew nothing and was left curious to know more.

I really want to see this. Saint Clara, made by the same director 13 years ago, is one of my favorite movies. (This looks totally different - Saint Clara is a supernatural teen movie.)

I've just seen it... it's pretty intense. Here in the Vicarage we have had some disagreement over whether cutting to news footage at the end was a good or bad idea. I found it quite affecting.

I found it very important as it did ground the memories recovered firmly in reality. Superb film. I thought the link between camps was a little strained but understandable.

I really don't like the style of the animation in the trailer. Also getting some strongly dissenting reviews.

Why not watch it? Can't hurt...

Just saw this, what a brilliant film. So beautiful and really gripping. The first half hour in particular and that AMAZING segue from the snow in Holland to them playing "Enola Gay" on the boat was incredible. Really enjoyed it. Thought some of the eye witness accounts later compromised the aesthetic value of it even though they were obviously very interesting in themselves. I guess it was hard to balance giving you the facts with presenting them in such an original way for the entire film.

"This looks totally different - Saint Clara is a supernatural teen movie"

not so different. both are surreal to an extent.
Follman made another film called "made in Israeal" which is the weakest of the three but also contain some surreal elements.

"apparently the director hit on the idea of animating it partly because several of the people he interviewed were uncomfortable with being on-camera or having their own voices used. it was done as a video doco first, then the interview parts were re-drawn and mixed with the flashback animations."

another reason as Folman said was to "direct" the war and dream scenes as he wanted, with no limits - budget or whatever.

the movie is awesome, and as said very effective, esp. if you live in Israel.
the problem with it is not cinematic (where it does break a new ground in cinema, started with Persepolis) but political, dealing with moral issues, and the fact that, Folaman comes very close deal with the personal responsibillity on war, but as he gets there, the movie ends, without saying anything meaningful or radical about it.

some critics in Israel argued ,on that matter, that if the film was even more political left-y, it would won something (maybe even the Grand Prix) on Cannes.
(and it shoud've got some prize in Cannes - it's great)

The first half hour in particular and that AMAZING segue from the snow in Holland to them playing "Enola Gay" on the boat was incredible.

Obv would have been even better if Scooter version used.

Zeno - I thought that the film really gained from not having an overt political message.

Pretty good. I hope it provokes some sort of political contretemps at the Oscars. Ariel Sharon > any Disney villain.

I haven't read anything about it other than complaints about its seemingly lazy/Flash-style animation. Is it not pro-Sharon?

Hell no, given that it ends with the massacre he nodded over. Sharon and Menachem Begin make brief, unambiguously villainous appearances.

Named best film of 2008 by the Natl Soc of Film Critics. Interview with Folman at HuffPost (where they persist in calling it a documentary -- crazy):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ibashiris-ari-folman-they_b_155254.html

I know it won National Soc. Still hasn't opened here to my knowledge and of course I'll see it when it does.

Visually it's a bit like Sealab with a budget, but I'm interested to see this.

non-state-of-the-art animation is fine by me.

I love Sealab. I hope this movie is exactly like Sealab.

only with massacres.

Its condemning Sharon was made into a big thing in some reviews and that may even have been the intention, but I didn't see it that way. It seemed to me to be more that war gives rise to many priorities, and at worst Sharon's were in the wrong place/at best he was operating in a cloud of second-hand information. Hence my comparison to The Fog of War above. The inquiry already found Sharon culpable anyway, so even at its harshest I would doubt the film is the big radical statement that some claim

It's definitely not radical. But it's at least in touch with reality.

I thought the film was incredibly affecting visually/sonically, even beyond/below the political ideas, which are also fairly subtle. It seems as much about a set of memories/dreams and how people remember things as anything else.

I don't know what lazy flash animation would look like but I was glued to the screen for the entire movie. The soundtrack is really strong and I can't remember being enthralled so much by a movie, at least during a few particularly good parts.

I enjoyed this more than most films I've seen in recent years, but I don't watch that many films either so discount at will.

I had no idea that song about bombing Beirut was a Cake rewrite.

yeah kinda random, just read that y'day. prob better than the original, haha.

I can't wait to watch this again, like I said upthread that bit where it goes from the richter soundtrack playing as it shows the snowfields in Utrecht to "Enola Gay" on the boat was so good. Also I thought the dream sequences were done really well.

It's very intense.

Oh wait, I've already said that. As you were.

I was gonna come in here to complain about the animation. And how they did this deeply affecting war movie with all the nuance of Aqua Teen Hunger Force

fwiw, if this was a comic book, i'd back it 1000%

this movie was great... i thought it looked fine but im not an animation nerd

^^^

if you need a certain amount of technical knowledge to say why it looked shit then fuck that

I saw this tonight. Was pretty tremendous. Very, very powerful. I've got a few thoughts about some things in it (the role of film as communal memory, the audience as observers/non-participants), but I'm going to give it time to settle before I write something.

I love Sealab. I hope this movie is exactly like Sealab.

― Eric H., Monday, January 5, 2009 4:49 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

for a brief split second i thought you said "Seaquest"

Local Garda, do you hate Rocky & Bullwinkle too?

never seen it

wait a sec, I don't really mean you, I mean anyone who was claiming the low-tech anim ruined it.

I was the opposite side of that fence.

right, sorry, not enough coffee!

Anyway, there were two major things that really spoke to me in the film - one in the form and one in the content. (Spoilers ahoy.)

The first was this idea of film as a communal memory. The movie unravels the story and the audience pieces together what happened in Lebanon along with the protagonist. I don't know how realistic it is that the narrator didn't remember what had happened to him in Beirut, but certainly it matches how we, the audience, will generally feel about Beirut. Even if we know the facts of what happened, we lack the phenomenological response. We don't have the muscle memory of what it felt to walk those streets and fire those flares. And over and over the film tries to eradicate that line between audience and narrator, generally by critiquing our position. The boy who watches the war through his "camera" until the camera breaks (mimicking our own watching of the animation until the animation "breaks" in the final sequences), or the old people watching the fighting in Beirut as though it were a movie (!!).

The second, which I've put a little less thought into, is the relationship between the soldiers trying to place themselves historically in this war, and that particular Israeli generation trying to place themselves historically in the context of the Holocaust. Both attempts to place themselves, to cross some lacuna of historical/generational memory, collide in that originating image - the boys in the ocean watching the flares go up. This also, I think, speaks to the idea of film (and other sorts of media/art as well) serving as a communal memory. A place where we remember the circumstances of our civilization publicly. And so the animation, and the confused memories, are appropriate here where the collective memory is so broken and conflated.

Interesting semi-pan from an ace critic:

http://academichack.net/reviewsJanuary2009.htm#Waltz

So, what do the drawings add?

On the most literal level, they add access. One of Folman's key interviewees tells him on tape that he may not film, but he can make drawings, and so this level of remove, owing something to the craft of courtroom testimonial pictures, may have sparked Folman's decision to move in this direction. On a certain experiential level, the animation also allows Folman relative freedom to visualize the nightmares and horrific memories of the IDF soldiers who (under tacit orders, it appears) sat back and allowed Christian Phalangist forces to perpetrate the massacre. These include the opening sequence, in which a pack of 26 wild dogs essentially mow down civilization as we know it in order to tree one of the men in an apartment building, to Folman's own hallucinations of the Beirut airport as a bustling fantasy site cut to the outsized measure of his wanderlust, instead of the reality of bombed-out fuselages, broken jetways, and mortar-buckled tarmac. The instantaneous shifting from subjective inner vision to harsh reality is a tool at Folman's disposal due to the choice to work in the animated medium. However, one must recognize that this is not a specific potential of animation. Budgets notwithstanding, the nightmare sequences could have been staged as fully physical mise en scène, as one would see in the films of fantasists like Gilliam, Burton, or Gondry....

still am obsessed with this. anyone recommend anything similar? is there anythin similar?

talk 2 chuck charles schwab ads

i was so not engaged by this and basically falling asleep

loved this. i thought the animation was essential in recounting the various characters' memories without portraying the events as hard fact. it was a very beautiful affair too.

damn this was good

just saw this. shaken by it.

not much mention of the excellent use of max richter's music in this, very affecting

yeah. i remember the rock songs, too. one was from an israeli band.

IMO probably the best animated film of all-time. Makes the ostensible maturity of Pixar look like Baby Einstein in comparison.

yes, this movie is a total, gutwrenching classic. music is great all around (Max Richter + "Enola Gay" + PIL!!!)

Amazing film that stands up to repeated viewing and really transcends the personal and specific topic...

Don't know whether there is anything similar, but at some point this month I'm about to crack on with the work of Elias Khoury

i've now read some criticisms of the film's supposedly whitewashing israel's role in facilitating the massacre. not sure about that criticism, at all, though the film could have gone further (or been more blunt) in damning israel's role, i suppose.

mmm, yeah, but maybe that is not the film's job.

That said, one thing I wonder is whether this new genre of Sad Israeli Soldier films has much further left to run.

was hoping this would be about star trek deep space nine somehow

"That said, one thing I wonder is whether this new genre of Sad Israeli Soldier films has much further left to run."

sad, but thats how it looks now.

the short blooming of good to great Israeli films is now gone.

hope it's just a phase.

what were the other great israeli films?

Beaufort, The Band Visits...

My Father-My Lord, Ajami..

keep 'em coming. i'm making a list . . .

(tho since my local blockbuster closed, i'll probably never see a film again).

Or - a must.

Late Wedding
Broken Wings
Frozen Days
Lebanon

mmm..

Others would include LEMON TREE, but I'm not a fan.

LATE MARRIAGE and WALTZ WITH BASHIR are my two favorites (post-2000, that is). Eytan Fox's films are flawed but fun (w/ lots of hot gay sex)

Oh, and Ari Folman's other film, SAINT CLARA, is AWESOME!!!

BROKEN WINGS dude has a new one this year, is supposed to be great.

yeah, a David Grossman adaptation.
the reviews in Israel didnt go nuts.

oh? i thought i remembered reading glowing stuff back during JIFF, but I haven't really kept up since then. Also I only read English coverage.

In any case, probably not a good sign that it's not playing Venice/Toronto.

also, Dover Kosashvily new one (LATE MARRIAGE) is dissapointing.

Does Eytan Fox's Walk On Water count? Lead is a Mossad agent rather than soldier per se, but he's plenty sad. I really enjoyed it anyway.

why does the soundtrack have a diff (and not as good) version of "this is not a love song" to the one that was used in the film?