Astonishing

Yes I know I'm a little late coming to this, the film was relased on Christmas Day in 2008, but unfortunately the only 'Arthouse' cinema in my area stopped showing arthouse films during a period of renovation work when this film came out, so I have had to wait for the DVD release, and even then I'm a bit behind the game!

The idea behind the film came about when the film director Ari Folman requested that his period of reservist conscription to the Israeli army come to an end five years earlier than normal at the age of 40. The army said yes but only on the understanding that Folman attend a course where former soldiers talked about their experiences in the army and in particular the 'first' Lebanon war of 1982.

Fast forward to 2006 and Folman meets a former colleague from the army who tells him he has been having a recurring nightmare about the Sabra and Shatila massacre where he is chased by 26 dogs. During a conversation between Folman and his ex-colleague it emerges that the colleague was responsible for the shooting of 26 dogs as a prelude to the massacre, he was given the job of shooting the dogs because he couldn't shoot humans. This is what we have as a beginning of the film. Folman the animated character represents Folman the real-life ex-soldier and now respected screenwriter and director.

Folman then sets about meeting other former colleagues and a psychologist and gradually fills in the details of the massacre and as he does so each person learns something more about their own involvement.

The film has been described as an 'animated feature film documentary' and I suppose that hits the nail firmly on the head but it is so much more than that. Of the nine main characters, seven of them are voiced on screen by their real-life selves, the other two are real characters voiced by actors and it is the way their words are used that takes this film out of the ordinary, indeed it has been described my more than one reviewer as 'extraordinary' and it truly is. It is only just over an hour and twenty minutes long but nothing is wasted because, as Folman himself says in an interview that is the only 'extra' on the DVD, the cost of drawing the animation and then turning it into film cost too much to allow the indulgence of 'deleted scenes,' no line of dialogue in the film is unnecessary.

There's no doubt that the Israeli hierarchy come out of the film badly, in fact Folman was criticised in Israel for portraying them as the bad guys and because one of the soldiers refers to the Israeli army as being no better than Nazi's. Of course as we know, whatever happens in the whole rest of humanity, no nation or race will ever be able to claim they have suffered more than those who suffered at the hands of the Nazi's. There's no doubt in most people's minds that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) were as responsible for the massacre of the Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the two refugee camps as the Lebanese Christian forces themselves. As one of the characters in the movie says, "People talk about preventing, but nobody talks about stopping." The IDF, having surrounded Beirut, stood aside, presumably on direct orders from Ariel Sharon, and allowed the massacre to take place.

The film, and don't be out off because is an animation, has have some powerful scenes and the dialogue is superb. The film closes with animation giving way to real-life film of Lebanese women walking past the corpses of their loved ones. We see the dead body of a child with curly hair buried up to her neck in the rubble of a collapsed building, the significance being that one of the soldiers in the film tells of a nightmare where he has seen this child.

The film is as much about the power of human memory, the ability to shut out those events that go beyond the normal everyday expectations and experiences. I tend to judge good films and good books on my reaction to them once watched or read and Waltz With Bashir left me staring at a blank screen in contemplation after it had finished.

The title by the way comes from a scene where Folman's CO dances on the streets of Beirut beneath a giant poster of the Lebanese milita leader Bachir Gemayel who was assassinated when a bomb exploded in September 1982 at the Beirut headquarters of the Phalange.