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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Review: Waltz With Bashir



Some people would say that war is beautiful. In an artistic sense, this can be true. It can offer some of the best colors, compositions, and subject matters for an artist, story teller, or photographer. The reason war is so beautiful is because it is so ugly and when you're talking about art, usually the ugliest of subjects are the most beautiful.

"Waltz With Bashir" has taken art and war and combined them into one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. It's an animated documentary, based on the stories of actual soldiers who were in the Lebanon War of 1982. The plot revolves around the film maker, Ari, not being able to remember what he did as a soldier during this war. He then sets off to question other soldiers who were there with him to try to regain his memory and mainly try to remember what he saw and did at the Sabra and Shatila Massacre.

The movie is mainly comprised of a number of flashbacks, dreams, and interviews, with some live action footage at the end. The animation is very unique, but I didn't find overly distracting. As you can see from the video, it kind of looks like a cross between 3D, cell shading, and rotoscoping. However, from what I understand, is actually done with Adobe Flash. The music in the movie was well done and actually fits well with telling the story instead of just being a backdrop for mood, or the setting.



However beautiful and entertaining this movie might be, at its heart is a serious message about a serious subject matter. Most war movies, at least nowadays, show the horrors of war, which this movie does show and it does show a lot of stuff that is not suitable for younger viewers. Besides gore, there are sex scenes and nudity. This is an R rated movie after all. However, unlike most other war movies, this doesn't go out to show how soldiers are heroes, to glorify battle, show the brotherhood of war, or to make it seem like some kind of test of manhood. This shows the opposite of that. It takes you into the lives of different soldiers as individuals and into their thoughts and feelings about the war they were in. What it shows instead of a group of soldiers bonding, is a single soldier alone with himself and his thoughts. In each of the stories is a sense of being alone and not belonging in a group. It shatters the whole notion of a band of brothers. This movie has successfully boiled war down to it's purest form, the individual soldier, and showed what he went through and what he was thinking. It shows the horrors that they saw that still haunt them, the actions that the still regret, and the fear that they went through.

I can see how many people would dismiss this movie just because it's a cartoon, because it might seem like Israeli propaganda, or just because it's a foreign movie with subtitles, but they'd really be missing out on a great and unique movie. I think the word "unique" really describes this movie since I really haven't seen anything like it before, and yet I just felt so comfortable watching it.

My only complaint was that some of the non-flashback scenes and interviews seemed kind of dull. It didn't look like a lot of effort was put into the background areas of these scenes, like they wanted to show them in a studio like a real documentary. It helped give the documentary feel to the film, but it also gave it a slight dull feeling one gets from watching documentaries sometimes. However, the film is mostly filled with eye catching visuals that will hold your attention.

It's hard to rate this movie since it's so original and there's nothing else out there to really compare it to. While this isn't exactly an anime, if your a fan of anime, or adult animated films, this ranks up there with "Akira" and "Princess Mononoke". If you're a fan of war movies, I think this ranks up there with "Apocalypse Now", or "Full Metal Jacket". "Apocalypse Now" is my favorite movie of all time, mainly because of the dark story and the beautiful visuals. To me, this was like an animated version of that. I loved the story, artwork, music, and everything so much that I have to give this movie a 10/10. There's always a few good movies that come out that everyone should see, that most people probably don't know about, and this is definitely one of them.

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