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Ari Folman, Waltz With Bashir
01/17/2009 In 1982 Christian Phalangists broke into the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and murdered women, children and elderly people in order to avenge the death of their leader, Bashir Gemayel. Waltz With Bashir is an animated documentary dealing with this subject. Yes, an animated documentary. Not words used together often, or ever, to my knowledge. By combining a real subject with the unreal nature of animation, this documentary became a movie worthy of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and possibly even the Oscar and is definitely worth seeing. Writer/director Ari Folman realizes he had no memory of his involvement with the Israeli troops in Lebanon during the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. He sets out to interview the other soldiers who were there with him to find out what he has forgotten. Later, he had the film animated frame by frame instead of putting it in a typical documentary format. In the film, Folman uses his personal perspective on the subject to not only show the futility of war but also express his outrage at the Israeli actions at the time of the massacres. The animation is useful to Folman in two ways. There are times in the film when Folman’s subjects are describing a dream they had or an experience. The animation allows Folman to insert these sequences into the story without breaking up the interviews with dramatizations. This also allowed Folman to reproduce the scenes of war and include all the explosions and gruesome details without actually having to pay for a cast or pyrotechnics. The animation also lends a since of uniqueness to the documentary. If Folman had kept the live action footage as it was, this movie would have just been another war documentary among hundreds on the same or similar subjects. Though nothing new about the tragedy at the refugee camps is revealed, Folman’s personal perspective and unique approach force people to look at a subject that much of the world has overlooked. However, the use of animation also has a downside. The animation of the film creates a disconnect between the seriousness of the subject and the way it is presented. Where the subject is that of war and death, it is oddly presented in a manor that has been used for fairy tales and video games. The type of animation gave me a since of balance. The movie was colored in somber tones with stark contrasts between light and shadows. The human movement lacked the fluidity and grace of real people, which is another thing that made the film seem fictional. My mind told me that these were real people telling real stories, but the eyes can play tricks on the mind. None of it seemed real until the very last sequence, which consisted of live action footage of the victims of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Without this final shot, it would have been all too easy to just brush off the movie as a tricky piece of animated storytelling. I felt that Folman included the live footage to drive home the horror of the event and the guilt he felt at being a part of it, if even he was unwittingly a small part. If he hadn’t included the live sequence in the movie, it would not have been as poignant as it was. That being said, there are scenes in this movie that wouldn’t have been possible and wouldn’t have been received well without the help of animation. The movie begins with a sequence of wild, rabid dogs running through the streets, which we find out it is the dream of one of Folman’s fellow soldiers. Because Folman has a recurring dream of his own after this, he sees fit to ask his friends if they had any dreams about the massacres. While the men being interviewed describe their dreams, we get to see them in detail, some of which would have needed a lot of computer animation anyway due to their whimsical nature. There are also some images in this film that I felt were made more acceptable by animation. Not everyone will agree with me on this point but there is a difference between seeing something reconstructed through animation and seeing something reconstructed in a life-like manner. As mentioned before, the men have quirky and sometimes weird dreams that we get to experience. In one such dream, a fully nude woman takes one of the men away from an exploding ship and floats with him clinging to her in the ocean. In Folman’s recurring dream, him and two of his comrades wake up lying in the water only to walk to shore, also fully nude. Now, I have nothing against nudity. It just seems that it would have been out of place in a documentary about war had in not been for the animation of the movie. Also, there are a number of gruesome scenes, involving dead children and firing squads, images that are disturbing enough to think about let alone actually watch. Somehow, the animation of the film makes it the slightest bit more bearable to watch these horrid events. And because I didn’t spend half of the movie turning away from the gruesome scenes I felt that I paid closer attention to the point that Folman was trying to get across. Folman also uses music in a unique way in this film. He uses melodies with hard beats to accent the harsh subject. There are a few scenes that are assemblages of violent gunfire and explosions that are set to cheerful tunes that have disturbing lyrics about bombing everything. The one scene that really stands out is the scene the film derives its name from. One of the soldiers interviewed describes a time when one of the men in his brigade stood out in the middle of the street and spun around shooting posters of Bashir during a fire fight. In the film, the soldier does this to a graceful waltz while looking like an elegant dancer. The scene with the music mixes beauty and violence so it was unsettling to see such grace in the middle of a battle. In the end, when we get a little taste of the actual tragedy, for a moment we understand a fraction or the sorrow felt by those associated with the massacres at the refugee camps. In the end, Folman is successful in showing us a side of human nature that we know exists but don’t like to think about. But through the individuality of this documentary we are forced to look and maybe if films like this continue to be made we will be forced to change. Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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Friday, March 12, 2010
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Foreign Film Waltz With Bashir Lebanon Film Documentary Animated Animation Cinema