Waltz With Bashir

An animated movie directed and written by Ari Folman, based on his own experiences. Probably right to label it a documentary feature instead of a movie. Nominated for an Oscar, won a Golden Globe.

Ari Folman was nineteen years old and in the Israeli army when the Lebanon War went on in 1982. For years he never thought or talked about it. In 2006, he realized that he didn't remember a thing during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, was he there? What was he doing? Folman began to ask around, looking for his old army friends, trying to remember what exactly happened with him at that time.

Waltz With Bashir was filled with reality, albeit it being animated. In fact, they were right to do it in animation which successfully captured the haunting war images, the dreams and hallucinations of Forman's, the upbeat rhythm of the soldiers' youth. Most of all, the film showed how wars are just plain useless. You can see how these young Israeli soldiers, who barely understood what exactly they were doing, were just scared and lost. Folman wanted to know what happened during the massacre, what he was doing at that time. How did the massacre happen? Who's to blame? Could anyone have stopped it from happening? Did anyone order those Christian Phalangist militia to kill all those Palestinian civilians? Historical facts might not be the point of the film but with these questions you are invited to think, to reflect. This shouldn't have happened, a war in the name of a certain god or belief, or just plain politics, shouldn't ever have happened. Yet it did, and it is still happening until now. As someone who is almost a non-believer, I was reminded of something that Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, The God Delusion, "Imagine a world with no religion. Imagine no Israeli/Palestinian wars." Yes, people, imagine.

8.5 / 10.

"I hope one day when they grow up, they watch this film together and they see the war that takes place in the film, it will look to them like an ancient video game that has nothing to do with their lives whatsoever."
--Ari Folman, during his acceptance speech when he won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, referring to the kids of the film crew that were born during the four year process of making the film.