date watched: April 30, 2009
location: In class (course title: "International Cinema After 1960")
Yes, it has long been taken down from theaters, but it deserves a few words.
Upon second viewing, I really got to appreciate the film beyond its mere images.
It was also neat to have it shown in 35 mm in class, since the DVD isn't due until June.
I don't want to say too much about this film. For one, I know very little about the Lebanon War, and don't want to taint the work with my ignorant remarks.
I do want to say something about the genre, however. According to the professor, director Ari Folman got 38 rejections out of the 40 he submissions he sent out. The main reason for the rejections was documentary companies rejected the film because it was an animation, and animation companies rejected the film because it was a documentary. What they weren't aware of was that the two can exist on the same plane.
The modern eye is overloaded with quick cuts, flashing images, and dizzying stunts. Waltz With Bashir really slows down human action, partly due to its animation technique of using traces and cut-outs, a kind of combination of stop-motion plus 3-D animation. It's a nice change.
With the plethora of information available today, it's hard not to see pictures of this and that catastrophe, and though it is a cliché to say it, we really are desensitized to such images as a result. In a way, although animation is not "flesh and blood" on screen, there's no right or wrong way to use animation, which includes its uses for documentary effect. I felt myself relating more to these images than I would to news images, as sad as it sounds.
The soundtrack by Max Richter really is amazing, too. It's available on iTunes, by the way.
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