Waltz With Bashir: A Review

“Waltz With Bashir” is an animated documentary that unfolds the true story of Israeli Director Ari Folman and his battle with demons of war.

In 1982, Folman was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier invading Beirut. “Waltz With Bashir” begins decades later with a friend’s nightmarish remains of attacking Lebanon. Folman cannot remember anything. He can’t remember if he was 100 or 300 yards away, or nowhere near a massacre at the refugee camps.

It is more than just a recounting of one man’s story, it’s a critique of personal and cultural memory.

Through Mr. Folman’s coming to grips with his own war demons, we see how Israelis and Palestinians recreate memories in order to demonize each other as a way to express their own pain and frustrations.

The healing starts when, for the first time in the movie, someone else besides Folman drives his car. This represents a notion of letting go. The audience is asked to let go of false memories and prejudices as well.

Next comes fear and the cracklings of violence.

“And then the horrific silence of death,” Folman narrates.

Folman and the other Israeli soldiers stand naked in the Lebanese ocean as they stare at the now famous destruction of Beirut. Destruction caused by a group of young boys.

“When the morning light appears, you see the destruction you’ve caused without ever knowing where you are,” Folman says with a tone of vulnerability.

These soldiers are born again to never be who they were before.

“War is nothing like you’ve seen in American movies,” Folman says on the website. “[It has] no glam, no glory. Just very young men going nowhere, shooting at no one they know, getting shot by no one they know, then going home and trying to forget. Sometimes they can. Most of the time they cannot.”

The movie’s honesty and openness is important for us to appreciate, according to Edina Lekovic, the communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

“Here we have an Israeli soldier reflecting and seeing his responsibility in something devastating and disturbing,” she said.

She agrees that people can often simplify the Arab-Israeli conflict into slogans. And that’s why movies like this enrich our conversations by adding multifaceted layers of perspective.

“Films like this are important because they reveal the human side of the conflicts and reveal the real people and families that have suffered great losses,” said Kevin O’Grady, the Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County and Long Beach.

At the end, the last scene becomes real when animation can no longer fully convey reality.

Israel had surrounded the camps and then lit flares to help a Lebanese Christian militia kill what Folman believes were 3,000 civilian Palestinian refugees. The massacres of Sabra and Shatila have reverberated through nightmares and repression ever since.

Take from this movie that all massacres are the same. Suicide bombings and the deaths in the Palestinian refugee camps are not any different. Humanity is equal.

Take away from this movie that there are no inhumane enemies and your angelic warriors are imperfect.
“Waltz With Bashir” makes you think of war and see no hero’s or rational. No flags waving in the soft breeze being kissed by an approving sun.

War is not the idea of John Wayne. War is filled with scared boys who fire their weapons at all times and at no one. They go home and try to forget but most never do.

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Credit: Abrahim Appel, 30, a freelance journalist residing in Fullerton, California. He recently acquired his B.A in Afro-Ethnic and American Indian Studies from Cal State Fullerton. He works as a live-in caregiver and is researching masters and PhD programs in Arab-Diaspora Studies or International Relations with an emphasis on ethnic relations while considering a career with the Peace Corps.