Reanimating Ari Folman’s devastating lost memories. By JACOB POWELL.

TAKING its title from a surreal scene in which an Israeli soldier, under heavy fire, enters into a trance-like dance in the middle of a street junction in Beirut under the shadow of several massive posters of Bashir Gemayel (president elect of Lebanon), Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is at once a surreal journey into lost memory and an incredibly sobering documentary of the first degree.

Utilising stylised rotoscoped animation to good effect, director Folman tells an autobiographical tale of his journey to retrieve lost memories of his days in military service during Israel’s war with Lebanon during the early 1980s. The film opens with Folman being called, out of the blue, late one night by a friend who relates to him a recurring nightmare he has been having for the past two years involving a pack of 26 murderous dogs hunting him. It turns out that this nightmare bears direct relation to his friend’s own experience during his military service, and this retelling sparks the process of remembrance for Folman involving a dream where he and two other soldiers emerge naked from the ocean on the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre (an impoverished Palestinian neighbourhood and refugee camp in southern West Beirut). Disturbed by the possibilities of this lost period in his life he is driven to research and try to recover these memories.

Folman’s story is adeptly told, without excess sentimentality. As his memories return he is shocked to find out the role he – as a part of an occupying force – played in letting the aforementioned massacre take place. His telling of this tale serves to indict the role of individuals and the Israeli military leadership of the time for turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Christian Phalangist militia after the assassination of their leader Bashir mere days before he was to take office.

A filmmaker and television writer by trade, Folman documented this journey of self-discovery which saw him interviewing old friends and army buddies to piece together what constituted his military service. Included in the interviewees is a psychiatrist and a neurologist friend who help to explain the phenomenon of his memory loss and the links of his felt guilt with the experience of his parents both of whom were WWII concentration camp survivors. Despite the documentary nature of the film, Folman’s use of dreams, and focus on imprecise nature of memory, serve to remind the viewer that every remembered experience is filtered through the perspective of the one remembering it. The film is meant less a definitive account of events than a reminder of a disturbing and shameful part of Israel’s military history, as well as a therapeutic device for the filmmaker who, having gained a fuller picture of his experience is now better able to move forward with his life.

Tonally, the animation in Waltz with Bashir has dark qualities mirroring its subject matter. There seem to be many orange and yellow hues, placing time and events in that space in-between night and day, light and dark. The contrast in animation style between the backgrounds and the people helps to convey a sense of disconnection which runs throughout the feature until, at the very end of the film, the final penny drops for the filmmaker and the movie closes with actual film footage. There will no doubt be comparisons between Waltz with Bashir and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis from 2007, both of which employed animation techniques to present highly autobiographical accounts from each filmmaker. However, the styles are vastly different with the latter employing a much flatter, simpler black & white aesthetic to tell a broader life tale, whereas the former is more focused in terms of it’s time frame and subject matter, and is visually more vibrant.

Waltz with Bashir is a fine achievement in filmmaking, with the director’s decision to animate the feature lending it an extra layer of metaphoric complexity. If you have a chance to catch this excellent work, be prepared for an emotionally harrowing experience that will likely stay with you for some time.

See also:
» Memories of Murder: Waltz with Bashir