Movies DVD of the Week: Waltz with Bashir
TITLE: Waltz with Bashir
GENRE: Animated/Documentary/War
DIRECTOR: Ari Folman
FUN FACT: At the 2009 Academy Awards, Israel’s Waltz with Bashir became the first animated film to be nominated for the “Best Foreign Language Film” Oscar. It lost to the Japanese nominee, Departures.
WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Few films capture the surreal, traumatic experience of war like Waltz with Bashir does. The fact-based animated documentary centers on its director, Folman, an Israeli veteran of the 1982 Lebanon War who can’t remember anything from that period in his life. When a fellow vet recounts a recurring nightmare he has from his days in Lebanon, it awakens a vision of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Folman, only he can’t tell if it’s real or imagined. By speaking to other soldiers whose minds are playing tricks on them to cope with their trauma, he attempts to piece together what really happened to him in Beirut. Animation, we find, is the perfect tool to express things so horrific that the human mind refuses to accept them as real. If there are winners in war, this film is one.
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Director commentary, “Q&A with Director Ari Folman,” “Surreal Soldiers: Making Waltz with Bashir,” “Building the Scene: Animatics,” and the theatrical trailer.
