Waltz With Bashir is a unique, haunting, and absolutely gorgeous film that I rank among my very favorites. Somehow I severely screwed up and forgot it when it came time to vote in the Documentary Countdown (it would have been my #1), so when this countdown came up I made sure not to make that mistake again and put it right where it deserves to be: on the very top of my list. I'm very happy to see it crack the top half of the countdown, though I wish it was even higher.
Here's what I wrote about it when I rewatched it in 2016:
Waltz With Bashir (Vals Im Bashir) (Ari Folman, 2008) Imdb
Date Watched: 11/7/16 Cinema or Home: Home Reason For Watching: Camo's Nomination for the MoFo Animation Hall of Fame Rewatch: Yes.
I first watched this animated documentary film in 2014 while preparing for the MoFo Animation Countdown. I've loved animation for quite some time, but I'll admit that - prior to seeing Waltz With Bashir for the first time - I had a very narrow view of what animated films could and should be. This film totally blew those preconceptions away and opened my eyes to the possibilities.
This is a film about memories - some vivid, some only half-remembered. It also calls into question the merit of memory itself and the mind's tendency to omit the traumatic and to fill in gaps when the true details are fuzzy, even to the point of believing fabricated memories. But this is only a short digression and the focus of the film is to uncover what really happened to the film's director and star and how culpable he is in a heinous act that happened in a time and place he can't quite seem to recall.
Drawn in bold lines and colored in shades of gold and blue, the animation is both crisp and yet somehow crude. The images don't move with the fluidity that you expect to see in modern animation, but this is not a flaw. The style of the artwork adds greatly to the sense of surrealism and a sort of numbness that accompany its depictions of the horrors of war. Many of the film's scenes are oddly beautiful - the reflection of a man in the eye of a dying horse, the graceful, dance-like movements of a soldier firing countless bullets into surrounding buildings as he spins circles in the street, and the glow of flares that light up the sky while soldiers murder civilians below. It's all strangely entrancing. But it's the final scene - the actual footage of the aftermath of a massacre - that is the most powerful. All that stunning animation gives way to images of the innocent dead - piled atop each other, partly buried in rubble or simply left lying in the street - and the grief stricken. It's a jarring transition, but one that is undeniably effective.
Waltz With Bashir is a film unlike any other I've ever seen. It's haunting and thought provoking and it presents its ideas in a stunningly unique fashion. It's a definite must-watch for any appreciator of animation and an excellent nomination for the Hall of Fame.
I haven't seen either of yesterday's movies or The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
My Ballot:
1. Waltz With Bashir (#45)
6. Tropic Thunder (#84)
7. Jojo Rabbit (#57)
10. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (#53)
12. Hotel Rwanda (#91)
13. The General (#64)
25. In the Army Now (One Pointer)
Colonel Blimp was my number six. I like how it was largely grounded in unique plot development, and of course a lot of heart was put into the story and performances. And Waltz with Bashir was my number 20. It tackles wartime trauma in ways fiction movies generally don't.
My Ballot:
6. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
7. Napoleon
20. Waltz with Bashir
22. Shame
23. Tropic Thunder
So just to be clear, for my countdown stats. Does Colonel Blimp covers multiple wars?
BTW, with Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the duo of Pressburger/Powell join the ranks of directors with multiple entries in the countdown. They had A Matter of Life and Death at #80.
The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp was #31 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 1940s. Waltz with Bashir was #26 on the MoFo Top 100 Animated Films and #10 on the MoFo Top 100 Documentaries.
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I have seen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp but it didn't make much of an impression on me.
I have never seen Waltz with Bashir maybe @Miss Vicky could explain the bad pun @Keyser Corleone is referring to.
Waltz with Bashir is the fourth title from my ballot to make the collective. Brilliant and beautiful, blending autobiography, documentary, history, and memory into this animated feature is such an unexpected, mesmerizing concoction. Ari Folman meets up with a friend he hasn't seen in many years, a man who is being haunted by nightmares of their time serving as Israeli soldiers in the 1982 Lebanon War. In Proust-like fashion Folman searches through time, stories from others, and his own faded memories to piece together episodes and traumas he too has been repressing. It all would have worked as a straight documentary or as a drama, but the otherworldly vibrance of the entire thing being animated is trippy and in the end compelling in a way more traditional representations of the story likely could not have achieved.
I had it as my tenth choice, accounting for seventeen of its one-hundred points. The first three-digit point total in the reveal.
HOLDEN'S BALLOT 7. Fires on the Plain (#59) 10. Waltz with Bashir (#45) 16. Letters from Iwo Jima (#60) 21. The Killing Fields (#69) 25. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (DNP)
I've not seen Waltz with Bashir. I have seen Colonel Blimp but it failed to impress me, I prefer Colonel Mustard...
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
I just plain didn't like this. I was so bored in the first 30 minutes that I didn't know how in the world I could make it through the full 2 hours and 43 minutes. Well I did of course and luckily the film got more interesting as it went, starting with the sword duel.
I general don't like this type of British dry humor, and it didn't help that I couldn't make out half of the dialogue either. The accents were to hard for me to pick up. And the scenes went on and on and on and on and well you get it...they went on a really long time. It's like this was 90 minutes of story stretched out to nearly 3 hours. And all to deliver the 5 minute war message that: Nazis are bad and the British better fight dirty or they won't win the war. I did at least find the historical aspects of that message interesting.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was my #15. Great film. I have it on Criterion blu ray. Waltz with Bashir is pretty good, but not a favourite of mine.
I've seen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but that was a while ago, so I don't remember it that well. I did experience some difficulties with staying invested in the film though (Powell and Pressburger can be hit or miss with me at times). Though yeah, I'm mainly just here to talk about Waltz With Bashir.
I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but Waltz With Bashir should've been on my ballot. It likely would've placed around the middle, if not a bit higher. Not sure why I didn't include it, but I feel bad for leaving it out. Still though, I'm glad it secured a nice position on the countdown without my help. It's a disturbing film and not merely for showing the ugliness of war (or for containing a particularly hard-to-watch scene in the final minute). It captures the hangout vibes of war, the absurdity and surrealism of war, and seemingly every shade in between. It also features subjective depictions of dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, and memory - yet none of them feel out of place and all feel true to the film's unique tone. I rewatched it at college last year and was also really struck by the emotional power of certain scenes, like a soldier who attempted to cope with the war by imagining he was just part of a movie or the lone survivor of a battle who felt guilty for, as he worded, not doing enough to save his friends. In spite of this, the film doesn't shy away from the brutality of the Israel Defense Forces. One person I knew felt the film was pro-Israel, but this can't be any further from the truth. Yes, it comes from the perspective of the Israel army, but the brutality they enact on the Palestinians is made as clear as day and isn't glossed over in any sense of the word. The Palestine civilians also aren't treated as background scenery, to the point that some of their scenes leave such a lasting impact which says a lot about how effective some of the imagery and audio choices were. For instance, I return to the "I bombed Sidon/Beirut" scenes every now and then as the upbeat tone, mixed with the irony and senselessness of the combat imagery, makes it quite powerful.
Another point which I feel isn't brought up enough is on how the animation itself suits the film very well. I think it works as a distancing strategy as, just as the main character is struggling to remember his role in the war, we (the audience) aren't seeing the "real" picture of what's going on either. We're just watching an animated recreation of the war. By distancing us from the combat, this puts us squarely in Folman's headspace. After he's able to jog his memory though, the ending switches to live action, indicating that the horrors of the war are now all too real for him (and for us, at that point in the film). A brilliant choice.
(the first couple minutes show the "I bombed Sidon/Beirut" scene I mentioned up above)
Seen both and I took did not vote for either. I didn't care for Waltz with Bashir the first go around. I have grown to admire the Powell and Pressberger stuff that I've seen. I'd be lying if I didn't say this one felt lengthy to me though.
So just to be clear, for my countdown stats. Does Colonel Blimp covers multiple wars?
BTW, with Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the duo of Pressburger/Powell join the ranks of directors with multiple entries in the countdown. They had A Matter of Life and Death at #80.
Yes, three of them.
Boer War (Second Boer War?)
The Great War
WW2
Ah well - I've seen both of these reveals. That's something.
46. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - The British had just been threatened with invasion when this film was made, and were forced to embrace change if they were to survive. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a film that's about this sudden evolution in thinking and lifestyle that British society, military and government underwent told through two main characters - Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) and Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook), a Brit and a German who become close friends after they duel in the early 20th Century. Candy stays stuck in his old ways in the years leading up to the Second World War, but Theo understands all too clearly that the age of chivalry and gentlemanly conduct is long over. This is excellently illustrated in the film's present-day prologue - and then explored from 1902 onwards in flashback fashion. I watched this while catching up with a whole bunch of Powell/Pressburger films and enjoyed it a lot - but my favourite of theirs is The Red Shoes. I expected this to show, so I'm not surprised it's here. I recommend it to all who haven't seen it - but I couldn't find a spot for it on my list.
45. Waltz With Bashir - This is a trippy kind of anti-war film - but I see it as such probably because I most remember the animated dream sequences we get from Boaz Rein-Buskila (Miki Leon). Ari Folman really hasn't made many films, and this is the only one of his I've ever seen, even though the animation (by Yoni Goodman) looks so familiar. Ethereal and haunting, it's something I should probably get around to watching again. The story about Boaz and the dogs is heartbreaking, and the idea of making a documentary that's animated is a great one (it also worked well with Tower, a film I watched in a Hall of Fame a while ago.) You can show some things more clearly and easily this way, such as the aforementioned dreams. It's stuck with me in that way. Though liking it, the film was never in contention for my list though - it's probably Top 100 stuff for me personally, although it might do better if I saw it again.
Seen : 38/56
I'd never even heard of :11/56
Movies that had been on my radar, but I haven't seen yet : 7/56
Overlooked films : Breaker Morant, Fail-Safe, Night and Fog
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Fwiw, according to the message with my ballot, Waltz with Bashir was my #4.
It's a rotoscoped documentary about soldiers relaying what ultimately were war crimes committed by their allies during an armed conflict.
It's probably not surprising it's on my ballot, but admittedly I have only seen it once a couple of years ago (though knowing of it for a long time). My opinion of it may change over time, but those types of documentaries tend to do pretty well with me.
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