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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Hebrew ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: "Waltz With Bashir" is a memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film. Directed by Ari Folman, an Israeli filmmaker whose struggle to make sense of his experience as a soldier in the Lebanon war of 1982 shapes its story, "Waltz" is by no means the world's only animated documentary, a phrase that sounds at first like a cinematic oxymoron. Movies like Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" and Brett Morgen's "Chicago 10" have used animation to make reality seem more vivid and more strange, producing odd and fascinating experiments. Mr. Folman, crucially assisted by his art director, David Polonsky, and director of animation, Yoni Goodman, has adapted techniques often (if unfairly) dismissed as trivial into an intense and revealing meditation on a historical catastrophe and its aftermath. "Waltz With Bashir" will certainly enrich and complicate your understanding of its specific subject - the Lebanon War and, in particular, the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangist fighters at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps - but it may also change the way you think about how movies can confront history. The core of "Waltz With Bashir" is a series of conversations between the director, depicted with graying hair and a thoughtful demeanor, and other middle-aged Israeli men who were in Lebanon in the summer of 1982, when the Israeli Defense Forces pushed up through the southern part of the country toward Beirut. Most of them were in the western part of that city from the 16th to the 18th of September, when Christian militiamen slaughtered as many as 3,000 civilians, ostensibly to ave...Waltz with Bashir ( Vals Im Bashir ) ( Valse avec Bachir )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Hagai Levi, creator of the Israeli TV show 'Be'Tipul' - which became in turn the inspiration for the latest HBO phenomenon, 'In Treatment', currently championed in the UK by The Guardian - said of Israel that "one of our problems as a nation is that in our mind we are still survivors, and sometimes we think that we can do awful things to others because we are survivors." Both 'Be'Tipul' and it US counterpart revolve around the psycho analyst's chair, each episode a single patient's session. Psychoanalysis - both individual and that pertaining to Israeli national identity - also pervades Ari Folman's 'Waltz With Bashir'. The film is a cathartic act of self-therapy, conducted on and by the director himself, with the help of former fellow soldiers: unpeeling an onion of buried memories revolving around his participation in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. His need to recover and clarify the past is provoked by a deeply unsettling, repetitive dream, which suggests a spectre of guilt regarding the events that lead to the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres, a dark chapter in modern Israel's short but troubled history - a history dictated perhaps by a national psychology of survival.
'Waltz With Bashir' is unusual because parts of the film derive from genuine documentary footage in which Folman meets again and interviews his erstwhile Israeli army colleagues in search of a forgotten past. The interviews, like Folman's abstract, fallible memories and dreams, have been richly transformed into animation in a manner that recalls Richard Linklater's visually-striking but emotionally vacant 'A Scanner Darkly'. The noirish visuals are sumptuous to watch, sometimes almost distractingly so, especially during the interview sections when the sound is flatter, unadorned by dramatic devices such as music. Otherwise the line between fact and fiction, between the remembered past and documented present, is blurred by the consistently arresting animated imagery; up to a final, horrifying awakening. This climax, without playing politics, imposes the ultimate question about modern Israel: can the nation continue to live with its nightmares in the all-consuming war for survival? With all the importance attached to remembering Jewish plight (particularly The Holocaust), can they really choose to forget the "awful things" done in the name of Israeli survival? A powerful, thought-provoking, beautiful film.
'Waltz With Bashir' is unusual because parts of the film derive from genuine documentary footage in which Folman meets again and interviews his erstwhile Israeli army colleagues in search of a forgotten past. The interviews, like Folman's abstract, fallible memories and dreams, have been richly transformed into animation in a manner that recalls Richard Linklater's visually-striking but emotionally vacant 'A Scanner Darkly'. The noirish visuals are sumptuous to watch, sometimes almost distractingly so, especially during the interview sections when the sound is flatter, unadorned by dramatic devices such as music. Otherwise the line between fact and fiction, between the remembered past and documented present, is blurred by the consistently arresting animated imagery; up to a final, horrifying awakening. This climax, without playing politics, imposes the ultimate question about modern Israel: can the nation continue to live with its nightmares in the all-consuming war for survival? With all the importance attached to remembering Jewish plight (particularly The Holocaust), can they really choose to forget the "awful things" done in the name of Israeli survival? A powerful, thought-provoking, beautiful film.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is a trully unforgetable movie about an Israeli soldier trying to remember the events of a fateful day in Beirut during the 1982 invasion.
Without going into the histocracity of the movie I would like to say that is not meant to be taken an historical accoint but as a personal recollection of the events.
I was very impressed with the animation with several novelties that make it stanning to watch. The soundtrack has a mixture of actors and real interviews with Israeli soldiers as well .
The human side of the story ,the futility of war ,the human cost are all perfectly reflected in the movie which also has a very moving and engaging.
Some reviewers give it one stars and call it propaganda but I feel Mr Folman made it very clear that this is not a documentary or an impartial view this is HIS OWN experience put into a film. If anything portraits the Palestinians as vicitms and the Israeli soldiers in the same way as some Vietman films show American soldiers as they walk in a Vietnamesse village and get a bit trigger happy.
Ari Folman ( director ) gives an interview about the film as an extra on the DVD where he explains his reasons for making the movie and his views on the events described in the movie.
Without going into the histocracity of the movie I would like to say that is not meant to be taken an historical accoint but as a personal recollection of the events.
I was very impressed with the animation with several novelties that make it stanning to watch. The soundtrack has a mixture of actors and real interviews with Israeli soldiers as well .
The human side of the story ,the futility of war ,the human cost are all perfectly reflected in the movie which also has a very moving and engaging.
Some reviewers give it one stars and call it propaganda but I feel Mr Folman made it very clear that this is not a documentary or an impartial view this is HIS OWN experience put into a film. If anything portraits the Palestinians as vicitms and the Israeli soldiers in the same way as some Vietman films show American soldiers as they walk in a Vietnamesse village and get a bit trigger happy.
Ari Folman ( director ) gives an interview about the film as an extra on the DVD where he explains his reasons for making the movie and his views on the events described in the movie.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I recently saw this on the big screen as part of a film festival. Being an avid human rights supporter I watched to see the story I knew nothing about.
A number of previous reviewers have called this harrowing, and frankly it is. The speaker at the screening advised us that at the start it was not for anyone with a nervous position about dogs, which I may see as understandable. But it is the ending that simply leaves you numb.
The visuals are striking, and as the memories are recalled, you feel yourself experiencing in the horror and the "fun" of the warzone. The kids whohad no idea what to do but keep shooting, the friend who's tank convey is attacked and he runs, you feel the isolation for his character.
There are gentle nobs also with this movie, when visiting a friend in the Netherlands, we witness a child playing with a toy in in snowy background, the beeping of the gun a stark contrast to the automatic weapons being recalled.
This movie is simply a must for anyone who has even the slightest interest in world affairs, animation and great story telling.
A number of previous reviewers have called this harrowing, and frankly it is. The speaker at the screening advised us that at the start it was not for anyone with a nervous position about dogs, which I may see as understandable. But it is the ending that simply leaves you numb.
The visuals are striking, and as the memories are recalled, you feel yourself experiencing in the horror and the "fun" of the warzone. The kids whohad no idea what to do but keep shooting, the friend who's tank convey is attacked and he runs, you feel the isolation for his character.
There are gentle nobs also with this movie, when visiting a friend in the Netherlands, we witness a child playing with a toy in in snowy background, the beeping of the gun a stark contrast to the automatic weapons being recalled.
This movie is simply a must for anyone who has even the slightest interest in world affairs, animation and great story telling.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Israeli complicity in Lebanon massacres through the eyes of its...
I'm no going to engage in the debate about the quality of the animation in this film, as in some other reviews. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. R. Dersley
Waltz with Bashir
I found the film unwatchable. I'm a lover of animation and this is simply god-awful, scruffy, two-dimentional, poorly-animated digital trash. Read more
Published 13 months ago by David Brookes
Should be no stars
Fell asleep and switched this DVD off long before the end.
I read in the British press that it was some great new artistic and interesting take on the middle-east... Read more
I read in the British press that it was some great new artistic and interesting take on the middle-east... Read more
Published 14 months ago by goldenbrown
Missed Opportunity
As a documentary this has the serious failing that it makes the massacre take up far less time than it actually did, as another reviewer has pointed out. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Johns
Skeleton in a closet...?
An excellent and significant film! It provides an alternative perspective on Israeli collective memory by addressing a moral dilemma: "Can we harm others if we were once harmed? Read more
Published 14 months ago by jaroslava
Amazing
An absoltuely brilliant film. I couldn't recommend it enough, one of my all-time favourites. It's not a war movie, for those who are worried. You won't regret buying it.
Published 16 months ago by Conall
superb
a marvelous movie
i was moved to tears on numerous occasions during this amazing journey
the animated style added a kind of hyper-reality for me.... Read more
i was moved to tears on numerous occasions during this amazing journey
the animated style added a kind of hyper-reality for me.... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Simon J. Williams
five stars
The best film I saw that year. Animation was a perfect tool to reflect the lunacy of the war. The use of dream sequencies merging with records of real events showed vividly how... Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2010 by enatat
an anti war film - from israel!
highly recommended animation from israeli film maker. just when you wait to hear the israeli point of view here it is told in exceptional circumstances. Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2009 by steppes
Waltz with Bashir
This is a powerful experience for anyone interested in human memory and self protection mechanisms. I ordered it to familiarise myself more with the current situation in... Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2009 by E. Dodwell
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