Speak, memory

Apack of rabid dogs run the streets of an Israeli town, driving people from their path, knocking over roadside café tables, their haunted yellow eyes narrowed with blood lust. They stop at an apartment building and look up at the man at the window, looking down at the challenging, unhinged faces below, baying for his blood. The man wakes up from his sleep. It’s just a dream, a terrifying dream.

Dreams and hallucinations play an important role in Waltz with Bashir, a bold new animated film from Israeli director Ari Folman, but memory is what the movie turns on— memory and guilt. Folman served with the Israeli army during the Lebanon war in the 1980s. He was part of an Israeli contingent which failed to stop a massacre of Palestinian Muslims by the followers of the assassinated Lebanese Christian President, Bashir. This film tries to unlock Folman’s black box of suppressed memories of that event.

War-time guilt and the role of memory in keeping that guilt alive as well as ultimately providing catharsis is nothing new war stories. Classics like Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line inhabit a similar cinematic terrain, but they were not made by a participant, nor were they animated. And these two details are where the power of Waltz with Bashir lies.

Early in the film, after Folman listens to a former army colleague describe the dream about the dogs, he slips into his own reverie, and realises that most of his memories are actually surreal dreams of dread. So, he interviews other soldiers who were with him at the time, as well as journalists, political commentators and psychiatrists. Every new conversation throws up more facts and Folman tries to piece together those traumatic years of his life. As one middle-aged man after another remembers their time in the war zone, what hits hardest is the arrogance of youth that the Jewish soldiers carried with them as they set about decimating Lebanese cities while listening to blaring rock ’n’ roll. Sounds like Apocalypse Now? Well, it’s actually more disturbing. Most interviewees adopt a bland, matter-of-fact tone when they reminisce, but you can see the shame and pain in their eyes. Everybody is complicit in war and Folman’s closure comes when he realises that the best way to deal with guilt is to acknowledge the facts.

Animation allows Folman a degree of vividness, irony and narrative poise which might not have been possible with live action. Because of the medium, you can see his memories warp and disintegrate in places, and come together with powerful clarity in others. It’s a long way from the Disney blandness of a decade ago. Constantly evolving animation techniques have enabled Folman to masterfully evoke the disorientation of war. And in the final scene, as the film cuts away to actual footage of the massacre, you realise anew how such scenes could have traumatised him for life. Waltz with Bashir is a film as relentless in its pursuit of truth as a pack of wild dogs.

A personal war War films are often about the protagonist’s involvement in and reaction to carnage. Here are five great ones: Apocalypse Now (1979) Coppola’s masterpiece can be interpreted in many ways, but the biggest theme of this film is power and insanity. Full Metal Jacket (1987) You need not look further than this Stanley Kubrick film, about the dehumanising nature of war. Born on the Fourth of July (1989) Oliver Stone tries to grasp the complexity of emotions when a war veteran is betrayed by his country. The Thin Red Line (1998) Terence Malick’s comeback film tracks the conflicted interests of different soldiers in a contingent. Half Moon (2005) Bahman Ghobadi investigates what happens when art and creativity gets caught in the vice-like grip of war.