Waltz with Bashir (2008)

An animated documentary might sound like a contradiction in terms. Well, it will appears so if a very shallow notion of documentary is employed. The first time I "watched" this film, I was at a friend's place. It was late at night. I was tired. They had a very small TV, and I could not see the subtitles. I understood nothing of the dialogue, but was stunned by the visuals. I still am. Waltz with Bashir succeeds in what has proven an impossible task for most directors: to evoke the space of imagination, dreams and memories. Ari Folman works with haunted images where not too much is shown. In this light, the ending scenes are all the more powerful. The questions the film ceaselessly poses is: what does it mean to "see", to "witness", to experience and be aware of? There are not epistemological questions, but rather, the director ignites these issues from a moral perspective.

The story begins with a sense of confusion. Folman tries to understand why he is unable to remember a specific event during the invasion of Libanon in 1982. Waltz with Bashir is an exploration of the past-as-trauma, reconstruction of memories and fuzzy dreams. It's a difficult film. It is also a very serious film. We see no traces of garrulous recollections of adventures. The film's images, in sickly yellows, reds and browns - ooze dread, fear and a dreamy sense of dislocation. A sense of something being all-to-real, too real to handle.  Of course, it is also a political film. Folman's trauma is not an individual one. His film seems to get at the more or less willful repression of memory, amnesia as an evasion of responsibility. But there are no pointing fingers here, or very few ones. The dialogue is quiet, and sticks to the concrete, to the level of experience rather than general conclusions. Questions about guilt and responsibility are not solved - but they are addressed. It is a very important film.