Waltz with Bashir, 5 stars

How rare and wonderful it is to find a much-hyped foreign film, or animated film, or foreign animated film, that actually lives up to what people have said about it and more. Yet here is Waltz with Bashir, an animated film attempting to tease apart one man's complicated emotions about his participation in the Israeli war against Lebanon in the 1980's. It is just that, and it is as serious as a plot summary implies, but it is so much more.

Immediately the film draws you in with its unusual animation style, something akin to rotoscoping but without the unmoored, handheld feeling that rotoscoping seems to have. I was watching this on a much smaller screen than I normally use, and I was still instantly afraid of the opening scene, a nightmare involving a pack of dogs. My heart pounded along with the narrator's. It seems redundant to praise editing in an animated film, since frames that aren't needed simply aren't made in the first place But this sequence is proof that editing in animation does exist, and needs to. The film only goes uphill from there.

The director, Ari Folman, animated interviews of his friends and comrades in an attempt to remember his actions during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, memories which he has repressed and is now attempting to reconstruct. Many tones mingle side-by-side here, which is often the way wartime experience can really feel. When the strains of OMD's "Enola Gay" began to play in a flashback of Ari's comrade partying on a luxurious boat, I couldn't help laughing. Of course the soundtrack would use the best (and as far as I know, the only) synthpop song to deal with mass murder. At other times, however, the film is quietly heartbreaking. One of the most touching moments, for me, was when one of his fellow soldiers tells him he can record their interview but not film it. What Folman has created is so much more truthful, in its way and about these events, than film could ever be. Many of the actions described would not be filmable without extensive and costly reconstructions of battles and explosions. By intercutting excerpts from interviews with animated reconstructions of the actions being described, Folman makes his point equally if not more effectively. This is proven by the footage of actual victims of the invasion which closes the film. After all that had come before, I actually found the footage dry, a method of presenting the material which has lost its effectiveness in a media-saturated world. Folman's friend should have told him, "You can film all you want, but just don't draw."