Review: Waltz With Bashir

The subject of Israel and Lebanon seems to be the new sweetheart of Israeli cinema. Last year the Oscars saw Beaufort, a film about soldiers during the Israeli withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, contending for Best Foreign Language Film. The newer contender for Best Foreign Film is Waltz With Bashir, the story of one man who can't remember his time serving in the IDF during the First Lebanon War. What occurs during the film, which is entirely animated, is the journey from bad dreams which he can't understand to, piece by piece, a recollection of what happened to him during his military service in southern Lebanon. This is not only a film as much as a case study.

From Wikipedia:

In 1982, Ari Folman was a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2006, he meets with a friend from his army service period, who tells him of the nightmares connected to his experiences from the 1982 Lebanon War. Folman is surprised to find out that he does not remember a thing from the same period. Later that night he has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the reality of which he is unable to tell. In his memory, he and his soldier friends are bathing at night by the seaside in Beirut under the light of flares descending over the city. Folman rushes off to meet another friend from his army service, who advises him to discuss it with other people who were in Beirut at the same time in order to understand what happened there and to relive his own memory. The film follows Folman in his conversations with friends, a psychologist and the reporter Ron Ben-Yishai who was in Beirut at the same time.

The entire films is an illustration (literally) of the interviews Folman has with others in an effort to reconstruct and remember what happened to him in Beirut in 1982. The characters in the film are actual people. The interviews are the actual interviews. The stories are all real. While being a treatise on the effects of war and conflict and the history of the Middle East, it's also a documentary on Folman's process in recovering his own memory and dealing with the effects of psychological stress some 25 years on.

It's critics also point out a different use of the film. For all its honesty, the film barely shows any Palestinians or Lebanese despite the war taking place in Beirut. The IDF and Israelis are cleansed of all responsibility for the deaths of Lebanese or Palestinians, despite doing everything but pulling the trigger. Even the medium of the film, animation, prevents the events from being truly real, instead keeping a safe distance between reality and us. The film manages to show a war completely one-sided, one where the victims are the Israelis despite more than 10 times the number of Lebanese civilians dying than Israeli soldiers. It's as if Israeli society as a whole, still reeling from the trauma they helped transpire, is still working towards their own recovery and isn't quite ready to address the full truth.

Politics aside, the film is an intriguing look at an individual's and a society's journey towards psychological wellness, and how people cope with trauma. It's an interesting film because the story is only part of what we're seeing; through interviews and flashbacks and stories, we also see the impact on people of the trauma they experienced, how they cope with it and how one man comes to terms with it. When you apply this to the idea that a majority of people in Israel are conscripted into the military it also can extrapolate to society as a whole, and may help explain why people react to current threats the way they do. Maybe it doesn't, but it at least gives you something to think about.

pictures from here