"Waltz with Bashir"

Wed, 07/22/2009 - 12:44pm

This is a terrific film about war and memory. It plays with your mind especially because it is an animated documentary -- the only such thing ever made, I think. It also is a good meditation on the difference between what you think might be going on across a battlefield and what is really going on. That's a lesson for any commander -- and for any journalist covering combat.

It is ostensibly about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but it really felt more like what poorly prepared soldiers might feel in any war. It is out on Netflix now. I recommend watching it twice in one sitting: First just the film, and then the director's commentary, which is like another layer of the story. (Also I noticed a lot more in the background in the second go-round.)

My favorite part was the one-minute version of Apocalypse Now, set in Lebanon. Wordlessly, it summarizes everything that goes wrong in a war.

My wife thinks it should be a double feature with The Hurt Locker. That's a bit too much PTSD for me in one bite.

Ya'akov Sa'ar/GPO via Getty Images

Thomas E. Ricks | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
( filed under: )


Advertisement

 

mistake

by Chris_Israel on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 1:12pm

"It is ostensibly about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Iraq"
Israel have never invaded Iraq.

I'm sure Mr. Ricks meant

by Tyrtaios on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 2:00pm

I'm sure Mr. Ricks meant Lebanon - the IDF invaded Lebanon, Pennsylvania - no?

I'm not sure . . .

by Charlieford on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 2:53pm

. . . but I don't think that baloney's kosher.

Yup

by tom ricks on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 2:01pm

I always get those two countries mixed up.

will fix.

thanks,
tom

Waltz with Bashir is a disonest film

by Laleh on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 3:04pm

I am afraid Waltz with Bashir belongs to that category of Israeli artistic production which best fits into under the title of "shooting and crying"... It is all about the sensitive souls of those poor poor Israeli soldiers who commit endless atrocities, but whose atrocities are redeemed by the terrible moral dilemmas they suffer later on. And after all, it was the gentiles killing gentiles in Sabra and Shatila, no? And more importantly, the terrible moral dilemmas of the Israeli soldiers is so much more important than the deaths and injuries inflicted on the Arabs.

The film absolves Israel of the killing of 20,000 Lebanese (and Palestinians), almost all civilians, and is more affected by the deaths of 26 dogs than it is by the devastation wrought in Lebanon and on the Lebanese.

Nope. Sorry. Although it is a very accomplished film, technically, it is at root profoundly dishonest.

I respectfully disagree

by tom ricks on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 7:26pm

I don't think this film is an attempt to deliver "objective history," which would be pretty tough. I think it is an attempt to deliver the truth of what it felt like to be a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in Beirut in 1982. On that standard, would you consider the film "profoundly dishonest"?

I would be happy--indeed eager--to see a film that told the same story from the PoV of an Lebanese civilian, a Syrian official, or indeed a Palestinian resident of the camps.

An anectdotal comment: upon

by Tyrtaios on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 4:12pm

An anectdotal comment: upon the Marine Corps' intervention to evacuate the PLO camps to prevent futher massacres by the IDF, our Israeli "allies" started a systematic pattern of harrassment to the point, that Commandant Bob Barrow sent an unusual personal letter of protest to President Reagan.