Waltz with Bashir [18]

The adverts you see in cinemas at this time of year either promote expensive Swiss watches or darkly violent video games. And there are moments in Waltz with Bashir when you could be watching another trailer for the PS2 - albeit with sub-titles and some less than glamorous 80s Israeli punk records as a soundtrack. This is an animated documentary, an unusal combination indeed. But though it’s compelling at points, a war film painted in hallucinogenic colours, the cartoon-like graphics serve to dilute its emotional impact, not helped by a somewhat meandering narrative. It’s an interesting film, but not a great one.

The film is the autobiographical account of director Ari Folman. Formerly a soldier in the Israeli army, Folman cannot recall anything from his time during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, including his presence at the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Phalangist militia. He visits a number of his former colleagues, plus a psychologist, to understand what actually happened, and why he might have repressed these memories.

Yet built around this gradual unravelling of the director’s past, the detached perspective distances you from the events being portrayed, whilst the clunky graphics seem at odds with the humanity of the voices they represent. Indeed, the calm interviewees sound incongruous against the dream-like visuals, and it’s difficult to really grasp how these people see themselves, or the events of 1982. Whilst there are some exciting scenes of armed combat, and a particularly thrilling episode where one of Folman’s colleagues describes escaping almost certain death by swimming out to sea, it is hard to get to know the characters that make up the story. This is an anti war film, but the horror seems very much locked in the past, forced to be characterised in luridly surreal colours. Tellingly, the most upsetting image is that of a number of Arabian horses who have been killed and injured by shelling.

Crucial to the film is the similarity of the massacre of Palestinian refugees to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. But it’s an intellectual concern, and the graphical style means you are not quite sure what effect this has on the director. Folman also interviews a journalist who relates how Israeli politicians at the time reacted to the massacre, but this is covered only briefly, and the change of focus seems to jolt the film off balance, from personal accounts of warfare to political documentary.

Waltz with Bashir is an original piece of film making, and an intriguing glimpse into the perspectives of normal soldiers during a grisly period of recent history. I never felt truly connected to these people, however, or the drama that they endured.

Russell George (DI Reviewer), 08/12/08

---