Waltz With Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) ***

Seen on DVD.
Released in Isreal 2008.
Directed and written by Ari Folman.

This is a flawed film in many ways. It's slow, and confusing. But I admire the intent and the ambitions of the director to make this film the way he wanted. For that reason i rated this film 3 stars in stead of 2 1/2 stars.

First off, it's a documentary but it is an animated film. This animation allows the film to show some eerie and spooky, settings. It's also an interesting premise. The director is trying to remember his involvement in the invasion of Lebanon and subsequent massacre that happened in 1982. He does an excellent job of getting to the psyche of the people he interviews and their memories of the war. For some reason the limits of the animation techniques they used, made people move very slowly which contributed to the slowness of the film. The film makers understood this and instead of trying to hide this fact, they embraced this limitation. The characters tend to float off into space making them seem ghostly. This adds to the level of psychological confusion and angst of the film.

So, the story is that the director is interviewing old veterans of the Invasion of Lebanon. He seems to have forgotten the whole incident, especially those moments of the massacre. He is curious or perhaps more precisely, haunted to know (he doesn't remember) just what his role in this massacre was. So we learn the stories of many of his comrades and the emotional trauma they had went through during the war. Eventually he closes in on the people who were there ( I believe the Lebanese town was laid to siege) at the massacre. What is discovered is that the Christians were mostly responsible. They entered the town and took care of things themselves. There's a hint that it might have been a retribution for the assassination of their Lebanese presidential candidate Bashir (hence the title of the film). But the Israeli army is not entirely off the hook. After all, they witnessed it all. The foot soldiers and lower ranked officers did try to report it, but the upper echelons of the Israeli army either told them not to worry and that nothing was happening, or they said they would do something and instead looked away from the atrocities.

One of the most interesting aspect of this animation as documentary is the ability to reenact the stories of the veterans. Because it was animation, the filmmakers could craft how they thought the incidents really happened and could dramatize it with out silly actors or such. It actually added a dimension of reality to it.

Here's a trailer...