Waltz with Bashir

In 2008, during a hot summer of Kabul, while I was wandering around the city of Kabul and trying to raise money in order to rent an internet café to teach blogging and online journalism to the students and journalists who were interested in doing citizen journalism, I approached a young documentary filmmaker who randomly spoke to me about the Oscar Award. He mentioned the movie ‘Waltz with Bashir,’ which was nominated for that award, but because I lived in a country that seemed disconnected from the rest of the world, I would never have hoped to watch the latest movies. Therefore, I never expected to watch “Waltz with Bashir” until I was assigned to write about it for my class.

The movie “Waltz with Bashir” is an Israeli animated documentary written and directed by Ari Folman. Folman served in the Israeli army and was an infantry soldier. He depicts his memories of nightmares of two refugee camps: Sabra and Shatila. At a time when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) occupied Beirut and blockaded the refugee camps, the allied Lebanese forces, enraged by the murder of their leader, entered the refugee camps, and overnight, more than 800 people were massacred.

Folman put himself aside and looked at this incident as a soldier who later said that we were all pawns in internal political disputes that resulted in the massacre of hundreds.
“Waltz with Bashir” is a depiction of horror, insanity, and pouring indignation. The film starts with a group of rabid dogs running towards a checkpoint and immediately cuts into a dialogue where a soldier tries to recall his lost memories from 20 years ago during the Lebanese civil war. He finds himself in a tank, shooting aimlessly. In the meantime, the film shows that the IDF was ruthlessly cruising the city of Beirut, moving from small alleys and driving the tank over cars and destroying the walls to find a way out. The story is being told by his friend, whose tank hits a mine, and as all the soldiers flee, they are gunned down, leaving one survivor. He swam and finally reached an outpost that belonged to his regiment.

Folman, afraid of dying, recalls his girlfriend and how hard it would be for his girlfriend to see his dead body back in Israel. He deploys to Beirut and after getting off a plane, he walks through a terminal and feels he should be sent on a vacation rather than to war. While he rejoins his unit, he and his fellows are suddenly targeted by enemy fighters from nearby buildings.

Folman tries to remember his lost memories; he hallucinates on the beach that he drowns while his friends left him. Folman tells the story through different characters: a cameraman, a commander, an officer, and a major. Folman shows that the Christian Phalangists take women and children out of their houses and drive them to a site of murder. The Israeli soldiers realize what will happen to them but are reluctant to prevent the massacre.

Finally, the film ends with actual footage of men, women and children who are brutally massacred by Christian Phalangists. “Waltz with Bashir” is a powerful film that narrates the story of Sabra and Shatila and could only be made possible through such an animated movie. “Waltz with Bashir” is a mix of horror and satire that depicts the most violent pictures with rock music, soldiers’ dreams of naked women, memories from living in pleasure at the beach, and surrealistic pictures and dreams amidst battle. “Waltz with Bashir” shakes up the viewers and shows the outrageous, shocking and graceless side of human nature.