There are times when someone sits down to watch a film and after 90 minutes realize that they've been sitting there in stunned silence the entire time.  Did they like it?  Maybe, maybe not.  Was it a good movie?  Well, it was certainly a "good for you" movie.  But was it fun, was it enjoyable?  It was both technically impressive and entirely engrossing, but enjoyable, who knows.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the person you're talking to just finished watching Waltz with Bashir.  This 2008 release, which won a DGA award for Best Documentary, a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category is certainly an experience.

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor – a documentary professor – who had an incredibly broad definition of what makes for a documentary film.  Waltz with Bashir unquestionably would fit my documentary professor's amorphous, widely encompassing definition, but it might not fit the standard definition.  The film, written and directed by Ari Folman, is an animated one. 

The main character in it is Ari, and his character spends the majority of the film remembering and interviewing people about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon (the First Lebanon War).  Within the context of the film, Ari is trying to remember what part he played – if any – in a massacre, and to that end, he is interviewing other people with whom he spent time during the war and/or folks who may be able to shed light on what happened.  The film, consequently, is loaded with flashbacks and functions much more as a series of short stories rather than a single story.

As for the truth behind it, and what makes this a documentary, all tales told by veterans in the film are true, or, at the very least, true for the people who told them (one of the themes the movie deals with is the vicissitudes of memory).  The vast majority of the real people who are turned into animated characters for the film are in fact the people to whom the stories happened (only two actors were used).  However, while the film strings the stories together into a single overarching plot, that part isn't necessarily true, Ari didn't go out and find friends from the war and link up with other people through them, he put up an advertisement looking for stories from the war.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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