Waltz With Bashir is an Israeli film by Ari Folman, an Israeli filmmaker and war veteran. The movie is an animated documentary, with some real and some fictional interviews and characters. The movie tells the story of Folman’s quest to remember his time spent fighting in the Israeli-Lebanon War.
While watching Waltz With Bashir, I could not help but notice the constant contrast between bright images of childhood innocence and gritty images of war and death. In fact, at many part of the film, the appearance of a bright object actually foreshadows eminent destruction. For example, Ronny Dayag’s flashback depicts his tank battalion encountering a small car dragging balloons. At the same time, Ronny and his fellow soldiers are eating a red bag of snacks. In both instances, the vibrancy of the objects stands out against the bleak grey and brown background. Shortly after, Lebanese soldiers attack the tanks and kill Israeli soldiers, forcing them to retreat. The scene shows how any form of enjoyment was forbidden in wartime, for fun leads to carelessness. Furthermore, the “love boat” flashback portrayed a hallucination of a light blue naked woman coming out of the black water to carry a soldier away from the boat. Perhaps this scene is meant to deal with the idea that the Israeli soldiers were just exiting their pubescent stages, still focusing more on women than on the coming fighting. In both the “love boat” and the tank scenes, the appearance of the colorful objects not only deals with a loss of innocence, but also serves to highlight the death and sadness in war. Even the movie’s style lends itself to this theme: The animated, comic-book style may seem to mask the movie’s violence; but instead the movie’s ability to control color and focus provides a way to accentuate the intense horror inherent in war. The bits of brightness throughout the film exacerbate the terror present in the battlefield and in the minds of the soldiers.
The movie can be found on both the itunes store and the amazon store (amazon is cheaper).