|
Waltz With Bashir |  | Director: Ari Folman
Actors: Ari Folman, Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Shmuel Frenkel, Dror Harazi
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Category: DVD
List Price: $28.96
Buy Used: $4.68
as of 9/2/2010 17:06 PDT details
You Save: $24.28 (84%)
New (42) Used (26) Collectible (1) from $4.68
Seller: broadysbooks
Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 4127
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Unknown)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 99
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: 043396289932
UPC: 043396289932
EAN: 0043396289932
ASIN: B001KVZ6AM
Theatrical Release Date: December 26, 2008
Release Date: June 23, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Filmmaker Ari Folman, an Israeli veteran, encounters an old friend suffering from nightmares of war and reconnects with other old friends to fill in h
Amazon.com
Waltz with Bashir presents an intriguing riddle: is a documentary still a documentary if it's animated? Taking over where fact-based animations like Waking Life and Chicago 10 left off, Israel’s Ari Folman tries to wrap his head around 1982's Lebanon War (the title refers to Lebanese leader Bashir Gemayel). Why do disturbing dreams plague his former army colleagues, while he remembers nothing? Folman meets with nine of them to find out. As they speak, animators recreate their experiences, but instead of rotoscoping or video-capture, Folman first shot his film on video and then assembled an animated version from the resulting storyboards. This graphic-novel approach suits their strange, surrealistic stories and parallels the work of Black Hole's Charles Burns, who tends to walk on the shadowy side (as opposed to Marjane Satrapi's more fanciful Persepolis). War may be hell, but moments of grace and beauty shine through, best exemplified by Roni Dayag’s recollection of a late-night swim away from the scene of a beachfront battle. Decades later, he still remembers the soothing peacefulness of the water. These reminiscences nudge Folman's repressed memories back to the surface, culminating in a horrific massacre to which he bore witness. Arguably, he didn't need to include actual footage of the deceased when stylized graphics get the point across fine. If Waltz with Bashir isn't a documentary in the conventional sense, it doesn't resemble most animated efforts either. What matters more is the harrowing narrative he constructs from out of the minds of these haunted men. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Stills from Waltz With Bashir (click for larger image)
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 54
 animation and memory August 1, 2010
patricia sowers
Had anyone suggested that animation could explore the complexities of memory, i would have scoffed. This film goes far beyond memory as it explores not just the horrors of war but the long-term consequences of war on a soldier's psyche. The opening dream scene of the vicious pack of dogs running through the streets is as frightening as only a recurring nightmare can be and its animation makes it brutally vivid. This is a film about the innocence of young soldiers and the repressed memories of one, now older, attempting to piece together his participation in Israel's earlier attack on Lebanon. It's a film that explores the terrible cost of war on the israeli soldiers involved in the attack but also, and most powerful, the terrible violence inflicted on the inhabitants of the Palestinian camps in Beirut as Israeli troops watched from the city's rooftops nearby. Especially telling was the director's decision to forgo animation at the end, letting the final desperate blood-soaked footage speak for itself. A brilliant and important work of art that transcends any archived historical document.
 Triumph of form over substance July 13, 2010
Ossian
Waltz with Bashir was trumpeted as the final word on the "first Lebanon war" of 1982, and having lived in Israel for a little while and knowing how traumatic that war had been for the Israeli psyche, I braced myself for something earth-shattering. I need not have worried. It's a beautiful piece of animation, breathtaking at times, but in terms of message -- blah. It's not even that the author's platform is so relentlessly Leftist; it's that he fails to make much of a point at all. Many reviewers have already noted the various bits he might have tossed in to put the thing in context, but from the film, and even more from the interview with the filmmaker that was included as a special feature on my DVD, I understand that teaching history was not his intent. Rather, the message, if there is one, is that war is hell, people die and survivors suffer; this is an important message but one that is neither new nor is done particularly well in the film -- if you want to see what art can do with it, read Remark's "All Quiet on the Western Front."
Finally an anti-war film that is actually anti-war. May 9, 2010
C. Gordon (Okhahoma City)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is what real war feels like. Confusing. Shameful. As a soldier in the Iraq war, I felt like the machine had been started by the powers that be. Once the machine is started, it is left unmonitored to do as much damage as possible. It doesn't matter when it stops or where or who it destroys in the process. It is war. You always hear that war is bad. I wish that meant something. Fact is, we will never learn. But there are some of us, Ari Folman included, that know the truth. And we will not be able to smile and go along with things the next time someone decides we need to start the machine.
Brave, unflinching look at war's horrors and moral costs March 7, 2010
Alan A. Elsner (Washington DC)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This movie is one of the best accounts of the trauma that affects young men -- boys really -- sent to fight wars which deeply affects them decades after.
The war in question is the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon which quickly went bad and ended up with the Israelis providing a security perimeter for Christina Falangists to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla where they massacred several hundred civilians.
The Falangists were avenging the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel, who gives his name to the movie's title. The Israelis ought to have know their Christian allies were bent on revenge. Moreover, on the night of the massacre, there were numerous reports trickling out of the camps that atrocities were taking place -- but no-one acted on them. The Israelis only stopped the killing the next morning.
Years later, through interviews with Israeli soldiers who took part in the war and psychologists, this animated movie examines the deep guilt and trauma many still feel. The animation is beautifully done -- some scenes are truly lyrical -- and it somehow allows the characters to become "everyman." We see young, poorly trained kids panic under fire and lash out by firing indiscriminately themselves killing civilians. We see a 12-year-old Palestinian kid wielding a rocket-propelled grenade, determined to kill and ending up himself being killed. The opening scene with ravening, yellow-eyes wolves bounding through the streets of Tel Aviv to howl under the balcony of one ex-soldiers is particularly striking.
These kind of scenes could apply to any war or insurgency and parallels between this conflict and the current U.S. struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear and urgent. Yet there is a special Israeli angle. Some of these soldiers were the children of Holocaust survivors, making the moral failures of this war even more traumatic.
Making this movie was an act of courage and honesty and we should honor the filmakers and listen to their message.
 Vile, Terrorist Propaganda March 6, 2010
Keri
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
I gave it a one because -9 was not an option.
If you want Vile, Terrorist Propaganda you're in luck.
If you like truth, avoid at all costs, you will have wasted your money and placed a coating of mud on your mind.
In the "special features" the director of this mess states it's slow because the budget was low. The movie portrays the Israeli Forces as bloodthirsty confused dope-smoking cowards, and the terrorists as the brave poor victims and victorious underdogs.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 54
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.  | |
