The Ravenna Kibbutz

The following was posted to Jew-ish.com after a Ravenna Kibbutz field trip to see Ari Folman's animated film.

It’s a movie-criticism cliche to say that it’s easier to admire a film than to love it, but that’s how I feel about Waltz with Bashir (currently at Metro Cinemas). Israeli writer-director-producer Ari Folman has more or less invented a genre with his Oscar-nominated “animated documentary,” and the animation allows him not only to expose us to hideous violence without overwhelming us (see also: Maus) but also to explore some of his themes via surreal imagery, like the now-ubiquitous shot of a soldier clinging for dear life to a giant naked woman doing the backstroke. (Bashir‘s animation style has a graphic novel feel to it in general, and this particular sequence seems like an homage to the imagery of Los Bros. Hernandez, even though it’s likely not.)

The film is a documentary inasmuch as it contains interviews with real people (depicted in animated form). It also conforms to the genre in that it concerns itself with actual events—most prominently, the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre during the Lebanon War. Folman travels as far as Holland to talk with soldiers he served beside in the IDF, and some of them have memories as fuzzy as his. He’s not even sure which battles he was part of, which incidents he witnessed—and, most crucially, what his role was (or wasn’t) in the notorious massacre. The film answers these questions on its own schedule, sometimes in an indirect way; this is no regimented march through history, but rather a winding journey through dark corners of several men’s traumatized psyches. It’s no surprise that Folman’s grim fact-finding mission is inspired by a chat with his therapist, and the movie functions as a kind of public therapy, documenting his path from ignorance to understanding and, presumably, serving as a kind of catharsis for the filmmaker. That said, it feels less self-serving—and less self-centered—than such a description might make it out to be.

Bashir is fairly talky, but when an action sequence occurs, it makes a big impact. The titular scene presents one of the most memorable war images I’ve come across; I won’t reveal it here, except to say that it combines grace, violence, and almost supernatural survival in a way that provides thrills you can only experience with clenched teeth. It’s a revelatory moment, a dark indicator of war’s madness, but it doesn’t push that idea down your throat. For sheer power, it’s on a par with certain images from the Vietnam fiction of Tim O’Brien.

I’m not entirely on board with some of Folman’s artistic choices (like a transition at the end from animation to actual post-massacre footage), but there’s no question in my mind that Bashir is a valuable piece of work. With the conflict in Gaza still raging, it’s astonishing to see a film partly financed by Israel’s arts ministry that depicts Israelis as facilitators of atrocity. At one point in the film, an Israeli soldier is asked how it feels to have been in the “Nazi” role in Lebanon, and the fact that a Jew is asking another Jew that question forces us to actually think about it instead of responding defensively, with knee-jerk outrage. That everyone has the potential to commit ungodly acts is a common theme in war films, but for a depiction of the IDF to invoke it packs significant extra punch.