Waltz with Bashir

Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir is a bizarre and intriguing animated film regarding certain events that occurred during Folman’s life. The movie opens with the scene of menacing dogs, foaming at the mouth, running through the streets of an undisclosed city. This perplexing scene is just enough to spark the viewer’s interest. The film draws on the life of the director and the events that occur are so unreal, that it would be hard for anyone to fabricate them if they tried. While there are many humorous and dreamlike moments, the topic however, is very serious. The film deals with the idea that war really does have an adverse effect on those who are directly touched by it whether they know it or not.
The animation and the music add a certain lightness to the film. The animation was a very interesting choice for portraying the story. Mr. Folman explained that he felt that, “There was no other way to portray” this story. There are many moments in which the story becomes so surreal that there really wouldn’t be any other options in terms of how to depict the scenes. For example, all of the dream sequences really are so fantastic it would be hard to show them any other way. There is a very dark sense of humor in the music, especially. The songs include such lyrics as “I bombed Beirut today” paired with up beat and optimistic melodies. They are songs that one could sing along to but the words have very solemn and somewhat morbid meanings. The music really reflected the attitude during the massacres, people had a very relaxed attitude towards them, they just said that they were being handled or that they had no knowledge, but they reality was that a very grave situation was at hand.
At the end of the film the first real people are shown. Pictures of real refugees and victims of the massacres scroll across the screen and the images are hard to view after seeing only animated figures for so long. The way that the film is animated almost takes away from the seriousness of the subject matter but, when the viewer sees the faces of the people affected by the situation, they remember what a tragedy it truly was. For this reason, the real images seem to be even more effective and heart wrenching than they would be on their own, or if the film had been done with real characters.
Folman had suppressed his memories and feelings about the war for so long that it was so difficult for him to face them after so many years. He thought he was living a normal life and that he had forgotten the events but they remained lurking in the dark recesses of his mind. They caused psychological damage that he was completely unaware of.