Amid all of the jostling for Academy attention that typically happens as each year winds down, and among all of the movie commercials fighting for airtime as the masses decide how to make the most of vacation days and extra money they may have come into over the holidays, one film made a relatively quiet U.S. premiere. It’s a rare type of documentary — an animated one — called Waltz with Bashir. In it, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman searches out people he knew during his service in the 1982 Lebanon War, as he cannot remember anything whatsoever from that horrifying experience. The trailer was certainly not what I was expecting…
With the violence in Gaza that has erupted over the last few days, the film’s subject matter is even more eerie and haunting. And while it’s obviously not going to be the feel-good movie of the year, Waltz With Bashir is one that I’ll try to seek out after it expands nationwide (currently it’s only playing in New York and Los Angeles). As the edgy animation has received extremely positive reviews and the documentary has won a slew of awards across film festivals, I have a feeling that we’re going to see a wave of topical films that approach true events in increasingly unique ways, thanks to the breakthrough direction of Folman’s work.
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