Hello this is Jake Winters for eye on the triangle this is snowverated and this week I will be taking a look at the film entitled A waltz with Bashir.

A waltz with Bashir is not really like any film that I have seen before. It is animated and uses a beautiful style that I can only describe as cell shaded. This is an aspect of the style but it goes beyond that. The colors change beautifully through the film and represent the turmoil peace and setting at every point. Beside the art style the method of storytelling is unlike most as well. The movie is essentially a documentary of one man uncovering his forgotten past. Which in it of itself is very interesting but it builds upon this by adding in obscuring hallucinations and dreams that are beautiful and terrible at times. A waltz with Bashir is has elements of a regular documentary but the fact that it is animated and has these drawn out hallucinations makes it more than that. It gives you a better sense of what the feelings of the main character are and why they make him feel that way. Documentaries make people think and a lot of times induce a lot of strong emotion but this is almost purely informational in that it shows how the war has affected the lives of the men that took part in it.

I had never heard of the Lebanon war before watching this movie. I think I had heard a mention of it in an Anthony Bourdain show but had never looked very far into what the conflict was actually about. A waltz with bashir is intimately familiar with the struggle of the Lebanon war and explores the various war stories and tradgedies that came from it. The movie deals with PTSD for the most part while our main character is trying to discover what is mind has made him forget but we also see the struggles of being a leader, a friend, and a soldier in times of war. Each story comes with its own speaker and truly gives as accurate a representation of the war as possible as it comes from the mouths of those who lived it. The men have moved on in their lives but it is obvious that this war has impacted them for the duration of their lives.

The opening scene of the movie is surreal. It starts with a dream that a friend of the main character is having. It is far different from the ones that come later in the film but it is by far my favorite. It is a scene of dogs running through a city to a destination unknown with action music playing in the background. You get a sense for the seriousness and oddity of the film right from the get go. The story does not focus on this odd dream for very odd either which makes it seem to me that they used it mainly to set a tone for the film. Going on in the film it is sometimes hard to tell what is truth and what is fiction. Most of the flashbacks are so gruesome and surreal in general that you would hope that they are fictional but it turns out many are not. This feeling of not knowing what is true is exactly what the director felt as he was making this film. He was searching and finding dead ends and roads that lead somewhere but not where he wanted to go.

One more thing I want to mention is the animation. Like many when watching this film I assumed some sort of rotoscoping was used to create it. Just in case someone out there doesn’t know what rotoscoping is Ill explain. If you want a film to look real but be animated often times rotoscoping is used. You essentially film what you want animated and then trace over top of the film to get animation. The people look real enough to justify this as being rotosoping but it turns out that this isn’t the case. They used a form of animation similar to rotoscoping but instead drawings were cut into segments which were then animated in adobe flash. I should also mention that the film does have one portion that is not animated. I mention it mostly because the imagery shown is so graphic and upsetting. I think it was the right choice for the studio not to animate this portion because it emphasizes how real the war was and no one could make it up if they wanted to.

A waltz with Bashir showed me a side of the middle east I knew existed but really have very little understanding of still after watching this film. The middle east has been in a stat of turmoil for the entirety of my lifetime and it is hard to imagine what living in an area like that would be like. Of course there are peaceful areas of the middle east where life is probably relatively normal but they have had wars within recent history there and that changes a population and a countries outlook on life. An interesting side note this film is banned in Lebanon. I often wonder why things like this are banned because stories are stories and the rest of the world will not forget what happened. It is in vain that these countries try to remove them from the record.

I am giving this movie a 4.25/5. It is a beautifully constructed telling of terrible events and A waltz with bashir gives insight into the lives of soldiers after their wars have come and gone.

Thank you for listening to this weeks edition of eye on the triangle and snoverated. I am jake winters and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.