MUBI

In 1982, Ari Folman was a 19 year old Israeli soldier in Lebanon, a country torn by a civil war. Now he is film director and a Golden Globe award winner. Waltz with Bashir (2008) was nominated for Oscar and received 38 another wins and 24 nominations. Banned in Lebanon and praised elsewhere for its novelty, the movie is especially remarkable for erasing the boundary between the real and imaginary. Based on real events of the 1982 Lebanon War and including witness accounts, it is also an animated movie. Waltz with Bashir is often labeled as a war documentary, but it is not a movie about war. At its center is the story of Ari Folman in search for his lost memories about what happened during the night of the massacre in the Sabra-Shatila refugee camp. Seeing it as a documentary would mean overlooking its artistic beauty; seeing it as a piece of fiction would mean taking away most of its strength.

“DRAW, BUT DON’T FILM”

During his military service, Ari Folman and his fellow soldiers were positioned near the Sabra-Shatila refugee camp. Inside, the Lebanese Christian military group was carrying out a massacre which took away the lives of 3000 Palestinians. The reason for this brutality was the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, a Lebanese politician and militia commander about to become the president of Lebanon. During his life (and long after it), Bashir was a cult personality, expected to end the conflict with Israel. Years after the war, Ari Folman met with one of his war time buddies, Boaz Rein Buskila. Boaz told him about a recurring dream, in which he would be chased by a pack of 26 ravaging dogs. There was no doubt about the origin of the vision. Boaz had shot these 26 dogs during one military operation and they were coming for revenge. The dream later became the opening scene for Waltz With Bashir, ridden with thoughts about guilt and memory. Ari and Boaz later realized how little they remember about the Lebanese war. The only thing Ari could recall was an almost surreal vision of naked soldiers coming out of the water and entering the refugee camp after the massacre. Less than eager to remember, but thirsty for reconciliation with his past, Ari set out for a quest to find out what truly happened. Recorded stories of his war time comrades later became the plot for Waltz with Bashir. The title is a quote taken from one of the interviews.

Most of the interviewees are not willing ‘to remember’. The message is clear – human memory is a vagarious mechanism. It will revive our unwanted experiences and things we have pushed out of our consciousness. Carpi lets the director to ‘draw, but not film’ – a remark so accurate it’s hard to believe it is not scripted. Neither Ari nor his friends want to face the reality. Why not? At the end of the movie, we learn that Ari Folman, in a way, aided the massacre. He was on a roof of a high building, lighting the flares helping the soldiers to carry out their ‘revenge’. Ari is haunted by guilt, and it is why he blocked out the event in the first place. For those twenty years, Ari has found peace in denial; now he wants truth. However, Ori Sivan, his friend, tells him: “Unwillingly, you took on a role of a Nazi, (…) but you didn’t carry out the massacre”. Waltz with Bashir tackles the undying question of collective guilt. In one scene, a crowd of Lebanese civilians calmly watch a shoot-out from their balconies. The Sabra-Shatila massacre is also not a big secret for the Israeli government. Who is to be blamed? Is Ari Folman guilty? “Yes’, hints the movie, and it is time for everyone to face their guilt.

If this was a piece of fiction, perhaps one would be tempted to say the real victims in the film are not the Palestinians, but Israeli soldiers. But, in case of Waltz with Bashir, it is not true. The real victims are Palestinians, and the movie is about a realization of being an accomplice. But the focus of it are not war crimes in themselves, it is the people who committed them. Even in the final scene, when we finally see the refugee camp, the camera soon looks away from the grieving Palestinian woman and leaves us with a close up of Ari’s shocked face.

REAL VERSUS ANIMATED

Contrary to the popular rumor, there is no rotoscoping in the movie – in other words, it is not based on filmed material. All the animation in Waltz with Bashir was done, remarkably, with Adobe Flash. The live action footage was only used as a point of reference to create digital paintings. The team had six animators – compared to 72 who worked on Wall E (2008). Most of the characters appearing in the movie are counterparts of the real people, but a few, like Carmi, Ari’s friend living in Holland, refused to reveal their faces in the film. Their stories are dubbed by professional actors.

Ari Folman says his choice to make Waltz with Bashir an animated movie was inspired by graphic novels, such as Joe Sacco’s Palestine, retelling the author’s experiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But the director has favored animation since 2004, when his TV series The Material that Love is Made Of came out. “Everything I did in life was always on the verge between reality and dream”, says Folman, and the animation medium turned out to be just perfect for blending documentary and interpretation. The film draws most of its emotional power from being animated. A lot of scenes are filled with an ‘uneasy’ dirty shade of yellow, and the medium lets the director to omit the necessary details, focusing only on pure emotions. Contrary to what a lot critics tend to think, drawn images is not a way of building a wall between the spectator and all the gore shown in the film. It’s not because we are so used to on-screen violence. It’s not about us, but about what the story means to Ari Folman. He never saw Waltz with Bashir as a “war movie” – it is a movie dealing with memory, and animation is suitable for recreating the dreamlike quality of our memories. The film ends with fifty seconds of documentary footage. Again, it is not about us or the horror of the massacre. Ari’s voyage into his memory is over. He finds the desired truth and leaves the imaginary behind. There is nothing more to say.

In one of the DVD extras, Director/Writer Ari Folman examines his own “Post Traumatic Sketch Disorder,” by asking, “Is a digital image consisting of thoughts as lines and digital information – is it more real? Is a drawn image talking with real sound less true? Who can say? Who is to judge?” As a viewer, I judged this to be a fascinating and effective combination of animation and personal/historical documentary. In September of 1982, Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. In response, Gemayel’s Phalangist political party militia surrounded Sabra and Shatila, two Palestinian refugee camps within Beruit, and massacred the inhabitants under the watch of the Israeli Defense Force, which was then controlling Lebanon’s Beruit. The UN quickly labeled the incident a genocide. In Waltz with Bashir, Folman, who was a young Israeli soldier at time, realizes that he has no memory of his possible involvement. He sets about trying to jog his memory by interviewing others who were on the front during that time. Woven together, these stories paint a vivid picture of the brutality of war and its aftermath. No rotosoping was used in this film, which is a testament to the skill of the animation, which is often photographic in quality though some motions aren’t entirely lifelike. At times hallucinatory, this film is fantastic and important.

It was an act of bravery for Ari Folman to make Waltz with Bashir, a disturbing biographical film about his experiences in the Lebanon War of 1982. It must have been really hard to look into his own psyche, but he pulled no punches, producing the best movie about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the most brutal. Waltz with Bashir is a truly unforgettable film that burns itself into your mind. We need more filmmakers like Ari Folman.
Also, Waltz with Bashir is an original film. It’s an animated, surreal war movie documentary. How many other movies can be classified so broadly? There are also two parallel themes present. There is the talk of dreams and how they construct our memories. Then there is the relevant theme of war’s psychological impact on people. The two themes meld and the film becomes a medley of flashbacks, dreams, and cross-cuts blurred together.
Animation can work wonders when it comes to explaining the traumatized mind of the narrator (Folman himself) and the way he recreates his past. There is an effectively taut opening scene with attacking dogs as a metaphor for war. Later, as Folman is interviewing equally affected comrades from his soldier days (building on his own memories through them), one recounts a memory of his experience at sea when a large apparition seemingly comes to his aid.
Additionally, animation is a useful tool in distancing us from the narrators, abstracting the images. But at the same time the images are so brutal that the reminders that we are seeing something real are ever present. Paradoxically, animation gives the film an austere authenticity, capturing the feel of the war-torn villages at night, \West Beirut after the Sabra and Shatila massacre (the image Folman keeps remembering of the aftermath is of himself as a young soldier floating in the harbor looking up toward a bombed building), and, in the best shot in the film, the glow from bombs as an Israeli soldier swims away to safety from the blazing shoreline.
Waltz with Bashir is hardcore and takes no sides. It humanizes the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially for Western audiences in more ways than one. The conversation between the narrator and a comrade now living in Holland is similar to so many conversations among soldiers found in any number of American war movies. But now we see how war has made Ari and his friends wary and nonverbal. Their lives will never be normal again.
War vets, no matter from which war, will be touched by Waltz with Bashir because it grasps the horror of battle so well and, equally important, the soldiers’ inability to resume a normal life afterward on such a personal level. It is among the darkest war movies and the most brutal anti-war clarion. At times, watching the film is like walking through a photography exhibition of haunting images. There are shots of dead soldiers wrapped in shiny sheets and gruesome images of a bombed airport with scraps of metal as the only remnants of the planes.
Waltz with Bashir touches on another point that is often overlooked in war film. Ari and his friends are just scared kids who don’t want to think about death and spend their free time dancing and listening to music. After their time in the battlefield, their innocence will be lost forever. Ari’s memories of his life outside of Israel’s compulsory military term offer a revealing look at the lives that were affected.
As far as Waltz with Bashir is concerned, both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict commit atrocities. Soldiers arbitrarily shoot others and Ari and his friends ride around cities running down cars with their tanks simply because they can. Folman blames this kind of mentality for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and his film is a poetic telling of a cycle of violence that doesn’t end, not in the least because of stubborn sentiments of pride.
As Ari’s recollections gradually return, the pace of his flashbacks change and it becomes clear that a bad conclusion is on the way. The title is explained in the most unexpected way. The events leading directly to the massacre begin dominating the flashbacks and our hearts start racing, not because we know what’s coming but because we can’t bare to watch it. The close of Waltz with Bashir, which transitions from animation to actual footage of the massacre, may be the most shocking conclusion to any film ever.
François Truffaut famously said that it was impossible to make an anti-war film and in most cases he would be right. That’s what makes Waltz with Bashir so special. It is, along with All Quiet on the Western Front, not only one the best war films ever, but one of the very few genuine anti-war statements.

I want to say that this is the finest line between fiction and reality that there is. Documentaries are never this beautiful and poetic in nature, Ari Folman has created a complete masterpiece. The animation seems to work with no problem and definitely makes the ending even more effective. The dream sequence in the water is so powerful. I really liked the opening sequence with the 26 dogs, just such a unique way of telling a story. You can either see it as a narrative or a non-narrative documentary, both would be correct. The content is extremely moving on top of all the visuals and storytelling, which really gives it the boost into a far more important part of film history. I would love to see more documentaries go this route.

1:Num post feito a respeito do modo de análise, tinha referido que o filme de Edward Yang (Yi Yi) me tinha feito lembrar os filmes construídos mais no modo de representação primitivo, que depois do final dos anos trinta passou para um modo mais institucional. Nesse sentido, achei por bem tentar perceber melhor o que realmente significam estes dois conceitos e quando ocorreu realmente essa transição e que fatores contribuíram para isso.
Podemos definir brevemente o modo de representação primitivo (M.R.P) pela continuidade e por o seu foco de filmagem estar dirigido para o que se passa no quotidiano, como se o cinema fosse um testemunho documental da realidade. O modo de representação institucional (M.R.I) carateriza-se pelo movimento da câmara, a profundidade de campo, a montagem e a construção de cenários.
Mas quero ir além de simplesmente entender qual é o significado do M.R.P ou o M.R.I. Mais uma vez existiram casualidades que levaram a interligar alguns conceitos que estão normalizados no mundo do cinema, mas os quais eu ainda não domino muito bem.
As duas imagens que coloquei acima pertencem ao filme intitulado Waltz With Bashir (2008). Um filme que nos conta a narrativa de um personagem que vive atormentado pelo sonho de ser perseguido por vinte e seis cães e não sabe muito bem qual o significado dele. Então, depois de consultar um seu amigo psicólogo decide enveredar por uma viagem para compreender o significado das imagens que lhe aparecem enquanto dorme. É uma interpretação dos sonhos à boa maneira Freudiana.O filme foi realizado por Ari Folman que por sinal era um dos soldados israelitas, que em Setembro de 1982 estavam presentes no massacre, que ocorreu nos campos de refugiados de Palestinianos e onde morreram cerca de três mil assassinados pelos Cristãos em Beirute:
Folman was one of those soldiers, but nearly twenty-years after the fact his memories of that night remain particularly hazy. After hearing an old friend recall a vivid nightmare in which he is pursued by twenty-six ferocious dogs, Folman and his friend conclude that the dream must somehow relate to that fateful mission during the first Lebanon War. When Folman realizes that his recollections regarding that period in his life seem to have somehow been wiped clean, he travels the world to interview old friends and fellow soldiers from the war. Later, as Folman’s memory begins to emerge in a series of surreal images, he begins to uncover a truth about himself that will haunt him for the rest of his days.
Antes de mais, é importante perceber como uma produção destas é produzida e qual é a técnica utilizada para se chegar ao resultado final. Também que o filme inclui-se no género de documental, embora para o olhar mais desatento pareça do género de ficção. Sobre isso falarei num próximo post.
Voltando à produção do filme, importa referir que desde que começaram as investigações, até à gravação final, passaram quatro anos.
Depois da versão final do filme, foi decidido por Ari Folman e o director animação Yoni Goodman elaborar um storyboard básico. Este processo demorou quatro meses. Depois da fase do processo do storyboard, começou o do animatic stage que demorou mais seis meses. Depois da sua aprovação a equipa de arte começou:
sketching the film based on the reference of the final video copy and the storyboard. In total, four illustrators drew close to two thousand individual illustrations and 80% of the illustrations were drawn by the film’s super designer David Polonsky.At the same time, the animation team, comprised of 10 animators, began animating the illustrations. If at the beginning the production forecast was that the team would complete 6 minutes of screen time per month, the intricate and Sisyphean technique developed by animation director Yoni Goodman caused the production to be 50% arrears as opposed to the plan and the progress rate was 4 minutes per month.
Durante três anos o ilustrador e director artístico David Polonsky desenhou 1720 ilustrações e não tomou parte na produção e ilustração da cena pornográfica do filme porque não considerou esta cena como apropriada para um filme como este. Como podemos ver, um filme destes engloba muito trabalho por parte da equipa de produção. Contudo, a pergunta que surge é porque eu quero falar do M.R.I e M.R.P com influência deste filmes. Isso é o que veremos no próximo post acerca deste tema.

2: Quando o cinema começou a tendência dos primeiros realizadores era filmar as actividades do quotidiano, principalmente nas grandes metrópoles. Por esta razão e segundo Nöel Burch o M.R.I caracteriza-se principalmente por:
“autarquia del quadro (incluso después de la introduction del sintagma de sucesíon) posición horizontal y vertical de câmara, conservación del quadro de conjunto y centrifugo”.
Ainda segundo o autor o sistema primitivo produziu alguns filmes que hoje aparecem como pequenas obras mestras, devido a uma certa perfeição arcaica. Este é o caso de alguns filmes de Melíes como Le Voyage dans la Lune; Le Voyage à travers l’ impossible; L’ Affaire Dreyfus; Barbe Bleue; Au Royaume dees fées.
E assim começa a minha intenção de perceber mais claramente o que distingue o M.R.I do M.R.P. Pelo que foi dito acima, de uma forma mais técnica percebe-se que o M.R.I caracteriza-se pela posição horizontal e vertical da câmara e dos planos de conjunto. São mostrados alguns exemplos de filmes de Mélies que demonstram explicitamente esses aspectos.

3: Somos todos capazes de construir pensamentos. Esses podem demorar pouco ou muito tempo a serem elaborados. Porque pensar é imediato, mas assimilar é mais demorado.
Estou farto de ter memórias efémoras que simplesmente se desvanecem no ar. Por vezes é aquele nome que não me recordo, outras é aquele sítio ou lugar, e ainda outras a aprendizagem que tenho conseguido ao longo destes já bem longos anos de vida.
Um pensamento é muito complicado de se obter, pois para que seja minimamente claro temos que investigar profundamente e mesmo assim nunca é suficiente, porque constantemente estão a aparecer novas descobertas que, simplesmente, mudam os paradigmas daquilo que era entendido como saber absoluto até então.
Isto tudo vem no sentido de um anterior post que escrevi sobre a maneira de analisar. Depois disso percebi que um olhar mais atento pode dar respostas mais conclusivas e menos ambíguas.
Tantos são aqueles que vivem na ignorância que tudo sabem, mas na verdade nada entendem e apenas portam uma “bagagem” que lhes foi dada por uma sociedade corrupta e cheia de apatia pelo trabalho e o esforço de ser melhor. Pelo contrário, é uma sociedade que valoriza cada vez mais o individualismo, o egocentrismo e a magia da ilusão do Euromilhões, que se reflecte no espaço comunitário europeu.
Eu faço parte desse aglomerado de pessoas e humanos, por essa razão não estou imune às suas patologias e sou transportador de elas também.
Contudo, sou único pela particularidade que me foi dada quando nasci e por essa razão nunca serei igual aos demais, bem pelo contrário os meus defeitos provavelmente são a qualidade de alguém.
Mas estou a divagar um pouco e apenas queria dizer que acho que descobri finalmente como relacionar o M.R.P e o M.R.I com o filme de Ari Folman Waltz With Bashir.
Primeiramente, comecei por decompor o objecto nas suas mais variadas camadas e depois de uma observação mais atenta cheguei a duas conclusões.
O seu corpo é constituído por conteúdo de um trabalho que tem ser feito em equipa. Uma pessoa sozinha nunca seria capaz de operar o “monstro”. Segundo, que as imagens são mesmo um forte meio de impacto e serve perfeitamente para enaltecer a tomada de atenção que alguns problemas merecem. O cinema é sétima arte, mas também é um qualquer poder institucional.
Aqui estava, na minha opinião, a fazer o que era mais correcto: ler um texto detalhado sobre a explicação do M.R.I e o M.R.P. Porém a análise de Noel Burch é demasiado objectiva para a conclusão que obtive.
Em suma, quando o cinema nasceu a sua essência era a realidade das grandes metrópoles e a técnica era limitada. Quando passou para um modo mais institucional, com a evolução da técnica, onde George Meliés foi “rei e senhor” o cinema adquiriu a presença no consciente das pessoas e o seu olhar deixou de estar estático e passou a ser mais activo numa fusão entre corpo e espírito. Uma emoção vivida pelas duas faculdades na emersão das imagens em movimento.
Neste contexto, o filme transporta-nos para uma realidade que existe, mas na sua representação adquire um substrato invisível, pois a sua mensagem não teve qualquer efeito. A guerra do Líbano de 1982 não foi uma invenção criativa da mente de um qualquer ilustrador de filmes à Walt Disney, foi um acontecimento real que atormentou o subconsciente de uma pessoa e um dia foi recalcado. Esse sonho transformou-se num objecto material.

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Le dessin pour mémoire – 22/04/2009

Le cinéma d’animation pour adulte propose peu de chef d’oeuvre. La force de Valse avec Bachir repose à la fois sur la grande intelligence de son scénario autour de la mémoire et de l’oubli et sur l’énergie magnifique du trait, qui joue des ombres et des couleurs pour mieux souligner ce qu’on sait oublier. Dans ce dessin animé construit comme un documentaire, on plonge dans une réflexion psychanalytique très forte sur la guerre, la mémoire et la culpabilité. Laissez tomber vos a priori sur ce que vous croyez être un film de guerre de plus, et laissez-vous emporter dans ce très grand film antimilitariste sur la mémoire et l’oubli.

more depressing than jarhead, more thought provoking than fahrenheit 9/11, and more colorful than persepolis. this is a new thing in the documentary world, and this new thing is a masterpiece! with the help of memory loss about a past war, ari folman has made a very extraordinarily unique documentary.

the way he used the colors was very bold. he used dark colors for the sad and depressing mood in the film and light and pastel colors for the happy mood and hallucinatory scenes in the film. the colors are all very unique. i have never seen that many great colors in a film before.

unfortunately, the duration of this documentary is too short for me. sometimes, the documentary felt like ignoring something important even though i don’t know what it is. fortunately, the ending solved that problem. this film’s ending is very brilliant in a haunting and emotional kind of way. it makes this film better than it already is.

bottom line, this is not just an ordinary war film, but also a self analyzing and soul searching documentary. the release date of this film is also very suitable for what is happening on planet earth today. influential, one-of-a-kind, imaginative, and creative. this mashed up of war film, animation, and documentary is one of the best film in 2008 and one of the best animation film that i have ever seen.

This film is one of a kind. It’s has a unique visual style, and I said that not only because of the animation technique used but the composition of the images, the color palette, the angles chosen by the director and more importantly, the storytelling technique..

The opening scene of the wild dogs running through the streets is unforgettable.

The scenes in this movie are very memorable and sound design is top notch. The ending couldn’t be more dramatic and original. I really enjoyed this movie. Highly recommended.

I’ve watched this film yesterday. Nicely done, Max Richter’s great work fits just fine with the atmosphere. However, i can’t fight the feeling that it is in the end some kind of washbasin handed for anyone who’s in need to wash their hands.
It remembered to me this thing that happened one friend of mine that went to israel for military service about four years ago. He talked about all his military training and how he had to shoot people in small villages near Gaza just to save his life. When i asked him if he feels regrets for shooting innocent unarmed people, he told me that when you’re there, and you become aware that you’re fighting for survive, you’re not able to think that those civilians are human beings, in that moment they’re just your enemies.
I think that all those soldiers just let the extremists do the dirty job while taking back their blind vengeance. But, my opinion in that matter is worthless because i’m safe and thousands of miles away. I can’t even try to imagine what those boys could ever think.
However, making a whole humanist argument based on that fragile circumstance it seems slightly dishonest to me.

this idea of cinema as therapy is great. if there’s film as entertainment, why not a way of recovering memory, even if it pains? courageous choice, no doubt… plus, do you remember hear from an hebrew mouth that they treat palestinians in the same way that the nazis did with them? all right then, don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity, is truly touching and the end is a slap at the face of lies we’ve been hearing for such a long time… but, if you want to go deeper to the darkness of the massacre at sabra & chatila, look for jean genet’s four hours at chatila, k.o. with out mercy at all, as the truth must be / the soudtrack is very effective, and so important that takes its place at the title name of the film

Waltz with Bashir is perhaps one of the most honest documentaries I’ve ever seen despite never using any actual footage of the events in question (with the exception of one scene). More than a gimmick, the use of animation is absolutely necessary as Folman tries to reconstruct his curiously absent memories of his involvement in the Lebanon War. It’s what makes the film ring so true: he never tries to pass off these reconstructions as accurate depictions of what has happened. Instead, he humbly discovers and shares his experiences to the best of his ability.

2008 has become a very odd year for foreign films. I like to think that it is a testament to the quality of movies coming over internationally that has caused this problem of picking those worthy of awards. One of only two Oscar nominees that mirrored the noms from the Golden Globes is Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir). It’s not much of a surprise that this is one of the holdovers being that it won the prize at the Globes and is probably the heavy favorite to win the Oscar as well. There is something to be said about that, as it is not only a pseudo-documentary, but also animated. Sure the rotoscoping style is like that of A Scanner Darkly and not anything like a children’s film, however, it still intrigues to be such a frontrunner, yet not in the documentary or animation categories. It’s a wonderful feat by director Ari Folman, putting his memories and those of others in the 1982 Lebanon War on full display. The remorse of whatever role they might have or not have played in the Sabra and Shatila massacres is never glossed over. These men either have vivid recollections or strong repressed dreams of what happened in that defining moment of their lives.

It all begins when our lead, Folman himself, meets an old friend at a bar who proceeds to tell him of a recurring nightmare, one that involves his being haunted by the 26 dogs he killed in the war. The rest of his group knew he wouldn’t be able to kill a human being so they told him to take out the animals, and even those left an indelible mark on his psyche. Besides finding out Boaz’s dream interpretation, the exchange really becomes the impetus of the film. Folman, never having any bad dream or memory of that period in his life, returns home and experiences a surrealistic vision of he and a friend, Carmi Can’an, bathing in the water as the flares light up the sky, the two of them slowly exiting, getting dressed, and walking out of the town. This becomes the one incident that Folman can grasp onto about his inclusion in the fight, yet when confronting his friend, finds out that it may never have happened. Carmi, (who at one point tells the filmmaker that he can draw him but not take video), seems to have not wanted to be involved in the movie as someone else voices his character. I haven’t done research on this subject, but from the comment about videotaping, I imagine he declined and hasn’t since passed away.

The fact that Folman has this vision, though, must mean something, even if it never happened, so he decides to speak with his psychologist. This man tells him that while the event never occurred in reality, it doesn’t mean that it never took place. To Folman, that night in the water becomes a way of telling himself that he was there, but not involved. It’s deduced that perhaps his mind, conflicted with the fact that his parents were in Auschwitz and yet he participated in another genocide, only this time on the side of murderer, has covered his involvement with a manifested picture, hiding his guilt from coming to the surface. As Folman speaks with more people involved in the battle, though, that memory begins to come into focus and he finally remembers what happened that night. It’s all shown on screen, along with the aftermath. And it is a powerful sequence watching these men partake in a massacre, never fully understanding what part they played until it was all over.

Being something that depicts events that were not documented visually, the use of animation works perfectly. Events could be recreated and then made into drawings, adding in the special effects and scenery to make it look and feel like Lebanon in 1982. It is a process that saves money from needing to set explosions and dress up existing locales to stand in for Beirut, etc. Also, being that the pivotal moment from Folman’s mind is a dream, we are able to see it just as vividly as any other scene of reality. Don’t worry, though, just because it is animated does not make it any less graphic or true. All the blood is still there as well as the utter destruction the Israeli’s left in their wake. A huge disregard for anything is depicted as tanks just run into buildings as they attempt to turn a street corner or guns are shot into areas not caring what the bullets may hit. One sequence follows the numerous attempts at taking out a vehicle driving down the road. The Israelis or Phalangists constantly miss it, but never stop, bombing everything and destroying whatever is nearby without a second thought.

Some of the firsthand accounts are pretty amazing to hear. I especially enjoyed Ronny Dayang’s account of an ambush and how he was left hiding behind a rock until nightfall when he swam to the opposite shore, only to find the regiment that abandoned him. It is actually quite fascinating hearing all these stories of remorse and guilt being that it is an Israeli film showing the Israeli side of the war. But it is the 19-20 year olds that are reminiscing, the boys told to not only kill, but to also probably die. I think the most obvious moment that shows how planned out the massacre was comes from reporter Ron Ben-Yishai, a man that walked the frontlines without fear as his cameraman crawled on the ground. He relates about how he called a high official about the rumors of the Palestinian genocide, and the response he got was, “did you see anything?” When the answer was not firsthand, he was told, “thanks for bringing it to our attention.” I’d be very interested to hear what lie he would have spun if Ben-Yishai said yes. This was retaliation for the assassination of the president-elect Bashir, the Christian man set to lead Lebanon. His death sparked the destruction at the hands of the Phalangist Christians, using the Israelis as accomplices to get their blood. There was no stopping it.