I sat still for some time after the film ended.  Waltz with Bashir had been overwhelming. Just that –overwhelming.

It is one of the best films I’ve seen this year. In fact, one of the best films I’ve seen, and it deserves all the accolades it has received thus far: six 2008 Ophir Israeli Academy Awards (Best Movie, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Artistic Design, Best Editing, Best Sound Design), numerous nominations and wins at film fests, and recently a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Picture.  All this, and it is categorized as an animated documentary — a genre that we rarely encounter.

Waltz with Bashir revolves around the experiences of director Ari Folman when he was a 19-year-old soldier in the Israeli army; more specifically, it is about the horrors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of the ‘82 Lebanon War.  At a bar one night, an old friend of Folman’s tells him that he has been having recurring nightmares of monstrous dogs.  Both conclude that these nightmares must be connected to their involvement in the Israeli army more than two decades ago, but Folman finds that he cannot recollect much of that part of his life.  In an effort to find out what really happened in ‘82, he embarks on an investigation of sorts to speak to old friends from the army, as well as a psychologist and a journalist, about the Lebanon War; these conversations lead to memories and dreams, and finally remembrance.

During an interview this year at Cannes, Folman states that many war films tend to glorify war by emphasizing the bonds and friendships created in battle.  With Waltz, he wished to show the absolute futility of war.  This he accomplished.  Waltz made me feel desperately lonely.  It is a testament to some of the most powerful war books I’ve read: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed.  These works were all written by individuals who have experienced war first hand, and what they describe is very much what Waltz With Bashir portrays: the utter surrealism of a battlefield where death is only two inches away from you, the difficulty direct participants experience in drawing the line between fact and fiction, and the lifelong trauma that soldiers carry.

The film is being called the first feature-length animated documentary.  Hopefully this genre will catch on.  Documentaries are usually pushed aside in favor of fiction, but the decision to use animation definitely elevated Waltz with Bashir from a typical war documentary to a memorable and powerful anti-war statement.  The film teams up with other animated features like Wall-E and last year’s Persepolis in showcasing the endless possibilities that animation has to offer.  Animation is becoming a full force to be reckoned with in the film industry; no longer is it thought of simply as a style that will appeal to a younger audience, but one that is capable of accomplishing everything and more that traditional film does.  Not only is it financially appealing for a film like Waltz with Bashir, where some of the scenes would have cost tenfolds more to shoot had they not been animated, but the artistic freedom animation offers is priceless.  Folman describes the surrealistic aspects of Waltz with Bashir as “a very bad acid trip”; I imagine this is how O’Brien, Vonnegut, and Sledge would have probably described their war experiences as well.  If Waltz With Bashir had been a typical documentary featuring interviews intercut with real images from the war, the film would not have been half as successful; the animated style definitely gave Folman the freedom to really express the “bad acid trip” that is the war experience.

The final shots of the film are of actual footages of the ‘82 massacre.  It abruptly interrupts the animation — a style that we often regard as “unrealistic,” as if to say “yes, it was real and it did happen.”  Waltz with Bashir is one of the strongest and most unique anti-war statements I’ve encountered in film; it is one of those films where watching it is an experience, and when you finish, it leaves you stunned and you have to sit still for a moment to fully digest.