If you have the opportunity, don’t miss seeing Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir. Like any true work of art, the film defies being boxed into any genre (“animated documentary” is what many call it). Yet in my mind it is one of the two best anti-war films I have ever seen (the other also being an animated feature, Grave of the Fireflies).
Calling it an anti-war film does not do it justice. There is no overt or even covert political message in the film. There are no clear cut heroes or villains. What makes it more than merely a genre piece is that it is an intense personal story of one man and his own life struggles. And yet through his story we can understand how war is both a human and totally inhuman experience, and how any individual can be both good and yet perpetrate acts of evil (a topic I have written about before).
Along with the story, the visuals, music and animation merge into an artistic masterpiece. Another aspect of the movie that I greatly enjoy is how it portrays Israeli culture so honestly and directly, and shows why, despite all its flaws, Israel is such an incredible place and Israelis can be such amazing people.
Gary Kamiya has written an interesting piece which gives some political background about the Lebanon war, and discusses the connection between the film and the current war in Gaza:
Israel knew in advance that by launching an aerial and artillery assault on one of the most densely populated areas of the world, it would inflict enormous “collateral damage,” to use the Orwellian phrase. Just as it was predictable that the Phalange would slaughter everyone in the camps, so it was predictable that attacking Hamas in Gaza would kill hundreds of innocent civilians. As the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out, the Gaza war is “maybe the only war in history against a strip of land enclosed by a fence.”
The very modesty of Israel’s goals makes the war’s civilian casualties morally unacceptable.
Here’s the film’s trailer: