It's an animated film in appearance, but in reality it is a rigorous documentary by Israeli director Ari Folman on the 1982 Lebanon war, in which he was a soldier, and the terrible massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The title Waltz with Bashir comes from one of the episodes narrated in the film, an Israeli soldier who begins to fire on snipers moving as in a waltz in front of the giant poster of murdered Lebanese president, Bashir Gemayel.
The assassination of Gemayel, attributed to Palestinian militants, unleashed the terrible vengeance of Lebanese Maronite Christians against the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. A massacre of thousands of men, women and children made under the eyes of the Israeli army, which did nothing to stop it.
During the documentary several people, soldiers and a famous Israeli journalist, the first to enter the camps after the slaughter and to witness what had happened, tell about their personal war in Lebanon. These are true stories and real people, as it's true the story of the director who cannot remember almost nothing of his past experience in the war, although the images were transformed into drawings.
This technique is used primarily to narrate the individual stories visually, but also has a terrible effect in the dramatic ending when the realistic cartoon images shift to the actual people murdered in the camps. Applauded by critics all over the world the film was banned in Lebanon and in many Arab nations and has sparked resistance in Israel, because the director draws a parallel, perfectly legitimate in view of the dramatic events, between the refugee camps massacre and the Nazi. After a series of journeys to remember everything he saw during the war, Folman in fact realizes that the reason he and the whole of Israel rejects the memory of the massacre is that on that occasion the Israeli soldiers permitted a slaughter quite similar to those made in Europe by the Nazis against the Jews and against the civilian population of occupied countries.
Waltz with Bashir is the sad, raw and honest analysis of a bloody war, in which young soldiers faced with death and violence are completely unprepared for what they would have seen and done. And so it must be said that few films and documentaries have been able to make so clear that you cannot find anything right and acceptable in war.
Francesco Defferrari
Francesco Defferrari
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