Movie Review: Waltz with Bashir

The only noncommercial movie I have notice of between now and next Wednesday is Woman in the Dunes, 1964, by Hiroshi Teshigahara, a distinctly odd entry about a man who is trapped in a sand pit by a woman and gradually comes to love his situation. It's from a novel screenwritten by the author, Kobo Abe, and was an arthouse hit pretty much all over the movie world in the 60's. Showing is at 7:30 Tuesday in the Blank Page Gallery, 917 West Douglas. And commercially, we have a fairly artsy item in a realistic animation from Israel, the Oscar nominated Waltz with Bashir. Waltz with Bashir is realistic like a realistic comic strip, which is actually pretty highly stylized for a movie, and the question it seems to rouse in most viewers is why it is animated at all. My first answer is that there is a big movement toward comic book style at the moment, with 300 and Sin City being the most notable examples. But I don't know that the Israelis share this fashion, and in any case, Waltz with Bashir seems to want to be something more than mere entertainment, not that a good many comic books don't want the same thing. The big problem is that animation distances us from characters, not to the point that we can't identify with them ? we can identify with a puppet in Pinocchio and a fish in Finding Nemo ? but, in this case at least, to the point that the characters seem abstracted, not individuals, perhaps with the intention that their experiences become universalized and we think about the general picture rather feel along with each person as such. The trouble with that is that I, at least, could not see their experiences as universal. The big mystery of Waltz with Bashir is why none of the many individuals interviewed is able to remember the action at the refugee camp, and when the full story comes out, it didn't seem to me to be so notable that so many people would have repressed it. Horrible as it was, it did not seem more horrid than many soldiers recall all too vividly after the war. The Eagle review said that when the final mystery is solved, "it's absolutely tragic and jarring," and the movie "certainly then packs an emotional wallop." I'm sure that's what's intended, and I wish I could agree. Because there isn't much of a story if you leave the mystery out. The hero is trying to understand his own memory lapse, and he interviews a number of his wartime colleagues who may help him with details. And that's about all there is to the present day action. The memory flashbacks depict what does not seem to be a particularly unusual military career, considering the nature of the war in Lebanon back in the 80's. One of the men seems mysteriously affected by dogs, and unusually able to look into their eyes from a considerable distance, but the movie makers don't seem to regard this is worth comment. Otherwise, there is a remarkable case of a sole survivor and how he made it, and a good deal of combat that is more observed than experienced first hand. It is surely more than coincidence that there are references to experiences being like watching a movie. The whole thing is reportedly based on the personal experiences of writer-producer-director Ari Folman, who maybe doesn't understand his case any more than I did. He says he wanted the movie animated because otherwise it would have been just a series of interviews "against a black background," which would have been "boring." Why he couldn't have used live action re-enactments he didn't explain. The comic book technique of Waltz with Bashir is its principal attraction, and most of the time it is pretty effective, though I'm not sure live action wouldn't have been equally so, except that the live action at the end would have lost most of its shock value. Jim Erickson has been KMUW's film reviewer since 1974. Jim taught Narrative in Literature and Film at WSU from 1966 until his retirement in 1997. Jim's favorite film is Citizen Kane.