Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Ari Fol­man, direc­tor. David Polon­sky, art direc­tor. 2008

Waltz With Bashir is a stun­ning, pro­foundly mov­ing ani­mated doc­u­men­tary about war, mem­ory loss, vengeance and guilt. It is based on true sto­ries and mem­o­ries gath­ered by the direc­tor, focus­ing on his own time as a sol­dier dur­ing the Lebanon War. It is his per­sonal jour­ney to recover hid­den mem­o­ries, to uncover exactly what he did, where he was, and what his role might have been in Beirut, cerca 1982.

I had no idea, going into the film, that an ani­mated fea­ture could be so pow­er­ful. Its slow pace at times proved decep­tive, and the final shift into live action, archival footage from the time of the Sabra-​​Shatila mas­sacres crushes the viewer.

What is most impor­tant about this film is that it puts the lie to the idea that war is glo­ri­ous, noble, filled with heroes and hero­ism as a mat­ter of course. While many recent films have painted war in a much deserved, hor­rific light, this film devi­ates from the usual Hol­ly­wood script by not por­tray­ing sol­diers within those wars as par­tic­u­larly heroic. Ari Fol­man makes that point in inter­views. He says that no one will watch this film and say, “War sucks, but I want to be in one any­way, cuz sol­diers are cool!!” Folman’s sol­diers aren’t cool. They seem lost, in a daze, a dream, even hal­lu­ci­nat­ing their way through its hor­rors, detached from it as if by some sub­con­scious, pro­tec­tive mech­a­nism. One sol­dier holds it together by see­ing every­thing as if through a cam­era. When he stum­bles into a scene of a mas­sacre of Ara­bian horses, his defen­sive shield falls apart for good.

Fol­man also made me think of the chaos, the some­times dron­ing chaos, the nearly zomb­i­fied reac­tions and indis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings of any­thing that moves dur­ing war time. Shots are fired all around the sol­diers. They fire back at every­thing. Sol­diers fall. Civil­ians fall. Snipers remain unseen. A boy with an RPG blows up a tank and the sol­diers cut the boy down. It’s all auto­matic. It’s all insane.

Though he doesn’t get into much of the pol­i­tics of the mat­ter, a quick look at the Lebanese Civil War period (roughly 1975 – 1990) tells us it must have been impos­si­ble for sol­diers to keep things straight. Alliances shifted. Coun­tries entered and left the fray. Syria, the U.S., Iran, Israel, and sev­eral fac­tions within Lebanon were all involved. The PLO played its part as well.

Waltz With Bashir, instead of dig­ging into the causes of the war and its mas­sacres, takes a dif­fer­ent angle. It focuses on war’s insan­ity from the point of view of the com­mon sol­dier. When we look at it through their eyes, all of the pretty speeches and calls for patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fice from lead­ers who never set foot on the bat­tle­field — the very same peo­ple who send young peo­ple to die by the mil­lions — rings less than hol­low. Their words aren’t a call to glory. They are the words of mad­men ask­ing us to become one with their madness.