Waltz with Bashir

I've been eager to see Waltz with Bashir since I heard about it last year, and it finally arrived in Nashville this week. Dave and I saw it Saturday night, and I've been racking my brain ever since, trying to think up something to say about it that isn't hopelessly cliched. "Powerful," "moving," "harrowing"--this film is all those things, but of course people say the same about every great war movie. I need words you haven't read a hundred times before, words that will grab your attention, because Waltz with Bashir is a film I honestly believe everyone ought to see.

The story is based on the experiences of the director, Ari Folman, who served with the Israeli army during the war in Lebanon in 1982. In the film, the character of Ari is haunted by his inability to remember the war, particularly the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, which was carried out by Christian Phalangists with the complicity of the Israelis. (There is a brief account of the war and the massacre at the film's website--click on the link for "The 1982 Lebanon War." You can also read Robert Fisk's account of entering the camps after the killings here.)

Ari seeks out and questions his old comrades from the war, trying to find the key that will awaken his memory. The film shifts continually from past to present, and from Ari's dreams and piecemeal recollections to his fellow soldiers' stories. The whole film has the feel of an extended nightmare, where even peaceful moments are surreal, and confusion alternates with horror. The audience feels the terrible tension that Ari feels, wanting to know the truth yet dreading it. In the end, the audience confronts reality at the moment Ari does, and even for viewers who know the history of what happened, it's an almost overwhelming moment of shock and disgust.

There's nothing polemical about the film. It doesn't set out to make an antiwar argument, nor does plead a case for any of the participants in the incident. Ari's story is presented in entirely personal terms, and that's what makes this such an extraordinary and valuable film. It's set within a seemingly interminable, complex conflict, but by focusing on the individual story of Ari--a character who does not fit neatly into the category of victim or villain--the film transcends the playground morality of war rhetoric, and just shows us what war is, and what it does to the human beings on every side. I don't see how anyone could ever entertain the idea of a "just war" after seeing Waltz with Bashir.

This trailer doesn't really do the film justice, but it will give you some idea of how beautifully it is made. The music is phenomenal.