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Waltz with Bashir
The Background
Documentary about Apocalypse Now meeting I Heart Huckabees in a bar, and deciding to dress up like A Scanner Darkly. (Altho i may be remembering some of that wrong).
The Front
What's real, and painted large, and made wonderfully accessible here, are the mixed reminiscences of a lot of once-young men, who were part of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
As they claw their way through the jumbled memories of that traumatic time, we're presented with numerous waves of sensory juxtapositions, transporting us from a noir-ish beginning through a welter of dreams, documented-deliberations & distant screams moving ever closer. Classical music plays as luxurious vines are parted, and an RPG-wielding kid dispatched. Rock-powered military-exchanges take place like 80s computer games, as if responding to feverish button-taps. We see it all through the 'dissociative camera' of the frequently wonderful animation, but the associations it brings out still leave their mark.
As much as this film is embedded in Middle Eastern, and particularly Israeli, concerns, I don't feel I brought much away from it on that front, however. If anything, the end feels unsatisfying, as reminiscences coalesce suddenly into a coherent whole, a stab at defining history. It seemed on stronger ground when the contributors -including the director- admitted they were unable to recall the whole, and settled instead for tracing their own scars, seeing where they might lead.
The Background
Documentary about Apocalypse Now meeting I Heart Huckabees in a bar, and deciding to dress up like A Scanner Darkly. (Altho i may be remembering some of that wrong).
The Front
What's real, and painted large, and made wonderfully accessible here, are the mixed reminiscences of a lot of once-young men, who were part of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
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As much as this film is embedded in Middle Eastern, and particularly Israeli, concerns, I don't feel I brought much away from it on that front, however. If anything, the end feels unsatisfying, as reminiscences coalesce suddenly into a coherent whole, a stab at defining history. It seemed on stronger ground when the contributors -including the director- admitted they were unable to recall the whole, and settled instead for tracing their own scars, seeing where they might lead.