Waltz With Bashir is an Israeli documentary that I watched just last night.
It's a unique movie in that even though it's a documentary, it's animated. This allows for a lot of creativity with the flashbacks and the dream scenes that occur. They are shown as hallucinatory as would be expected from a real experience.
The movie is about the film-maker's deployment to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982. Israel intervened in what was later to become the Lebanese Civil War, on the behalf of its Christian Phalangist allies, led by the charismatic Bachir Gemayel.
For a war movie, it was very silent about war itself. The war is simultaneously to be both totally absurd and totally natural, almost like it's an essential part of life. That was very unnerving, and I felt it went against the very stereotypical expectations of war - the inflamed passions, the hate, the anger.
Cue the war scenes. People are shown dying so randomly it's absurd. Another thing is you don't know which side the people who're doing both the killing and dying are on.
Sadly, it looks like some people have missed the point of the movie and use it as fodder for their own political views and accusations. Not once did the movie try to take sides or moralize.
It's the rawest documentary on war I've seen. It's very anti war in its own way.
I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in the Middle Eastern conflicts, or the effects of war in general.
Cue the war scenes. People are shown dying so randomly it's absurd. Another thing is you don't know which side the people who're doing both the killing and dying are on.
Sadly, it looks like some people have missed the point of the movie and use it as fodder for their own political views and accusations. Not once did the movie try to take sides or moralize.
It's the rawest documentary on war I've seen. It's very anti war in its own way.
I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in the Middle Eastern conflicts, or the effects of war in general.
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