LogFAQs > #975326464

14. Waltz With Bashir

Mythiot: 3
Suprak: 5
Evillord: 8
Johnbobb: 8
Inviso: 18
Karo: 20
Plasma: 22
Ermine: 23
Red: 30

Total: 137

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Evillord: An animated documentary in which Israeli soldiers reflect on the 1982 Lebanon War, and especially the Sabra and Shatila massacre, with themes about the nature of memory and dissociation as a coping mechanism. This was one of the more disillusioning war movies I've seen in terms of how clearly it communicated that most of the soldiers had no idea what was going on at basically any point in the war, and that even those with years of training, including officers, were driven mostly by fear and panic during the real fighting.

Johnbobb: This was a difficult one to watch, and the emotional whiplash of going from Sing 2 and The Angry Birds movie to this is hard to even quantify. I was expecting sad, dark and even deeply depressing indie films to show up on this list, but what I wasn't prepared for was an animated documentary depiction of a real massacre shown and explained in full violent detail. I'm simultaneously glad I watched it but it's hard to really explain how I feel about it in a way more than just "I'm very sad now, and my view of the world is just a little bit worse than it alreadty was"

Inviso: On the one hand, its hard to classify this as an animated film, because its only animated in terms of providing scenes that would otherwise not be possible in a straight-up documentary. You cant capture someones memories or internal thoughts in a live-action documentary. Sure, thats the point of a documentary and the talking heads and all that, but still. But yeah, its still animated, and enters into realms of magical realism for those memories, in ways that might not work otherwise. Now, Id never heard of this particular conflict before, so seeing it play out in vivid detail, with people recounting the horrors and trauma they lived through, was bad enough. But then that ending. Like, everything was building up to it, and stilljust seeing it play out, and the wails of wives and mothers, suddenly VERY REAL in news footageI started crying. This movie just kept getting more and more intense as it went along, and I appreciate it for that.

Vis Cry Count 1: Like I said above, I started UGLY crying at the end of this movie. Just the dissolve from animated wailing to news footage was horrifying.

Karo: So this is like a semi-documentary about an Israeli soldier who lost his memory due to PTSD and goes around hearing the war stories of his old military buddies in an effort to remember.
They did a good job of finding an art style that could capture the horrors of war, but something about the animation itself just seems... off. The reason for this is simple: Waltz with Bashir is not the rotoscoped film that it pretends to be, but is instead largely animated in Adobe Flash. The thing is, Flash is a shitty animation method with immense limitations, and to try and use it in a serious film with realistic human characters is just asking for trouble. The uncanny valley is strong with this one, I'm afraid.
It is a compelling story with an astoundingly powerful anti-war message that is hobbled by some terrible production choices that prevent it from reaching its full potential, and that is quite a shame.

Plasma: Love the art style, and some moments were truly gripping and horrifying, but overall this didnt click with me. I wish I had come into this one with better context. When it started bouncing around between different characters/storylines, my attention blipped.

Ermine: This film was too long and it's only an hour and a half. Not that it ever was going to do that well for me, but I was at least a little bit interested in Ari's tale of recovering his memories to remember what happened during the war. It just kept going on and on and never really felt like it was building up to anything.
Also nudity, because we gotta have nudity in these types of movies. It makes them more realistic, y'know! Every single time with one of these films there's always parts where they have to focus on it for some reason. I'll never understand it.
Yeah, not for me. And even for the people that it's for, I can't really see it being that incredible for them. Next.

Red: Are we anti-war? Are we trying to show the horrors PTSD inflicts on soldiers? Are we trying to be sympathetic to a bunch of Israeli soldiers that likely would have also done horrible things if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time instead? Some of them that did do horrible things. Am I supposed to feel sympathy for you when you tell me you couldn't go kill a human but have no problem slaughtering a bunch of innocent dogs? I've got a lot of problems with the messaging in a lot of these movies but Waltz with Bashir and its attempt to garner sympathy for horrible people just doesn't sit right with me. I don't want to pretend to know the intent here, but at worst there is a decent argument to be made that this movie is trying to absolve Israeli soliders of the horrors they were in fact a part of just because they weren't directly involved. At best, we're trying to say they were indirectly involved but still deserved sympathy because they were young and naive. That still isn't a good message. Don't try to make me feel sympathy for people that don't deserve it, because it isn't going to work.