Waltz With Bashir Essay

In the film Waltz with Bashir, the main character Ari Folman, discovers he has no recollection of his time in the Israeli-Lebanese war. All he has left is a vision of himself and other soldiers bathing in water, while flair light up the sky. Ari embarks on a mission to seek out what really happened in the war. The story of his journey to remember the details of a horrific massacre that took place, is told through colorful and seemingly hallucinogenic animation. The story, as well as the way it is present, is meant to show that our brains have the nature to suppress horrifying and disturbing memories. As time goes on, these memories lay dormant in our subconscious. While ever present, they are hidden in the deepest parts of our minds. Eventually the memories return to Bashir. As soon as Bashir regains his memory, and learns of the horrors that took place,

he becomes flooded with guilt. These are the contexts of the film. The way in which traumatic events can have an effect on memory, and guilt plays in the memory process.
The films centers on the Israeli war in Lebanon. The film’s director and main character, Ari, served as a foot soldier during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Two decades later, Ari meets with an old friend from his Army days. His friend, Boaz Rein-Buskila, tells Ari about a recurring dream he has been having. In the dream, 26 rabid dogs race down the streets. The dogs come to a halt at a building and begin incessantly barking at Boaz. Ari asks Boaz what is the meaning behind the dream? And Boaz states that when he was in the Army, his commanders knew he would not kill anyone. So when they approached a town, he was in charge of killing the dogs, who might alert the civilians. The memory of killing the dogs has stuck with Boaz to this day. Ari realizes after this conversation that he no longer remembers much of the war he fought in. The only image that has stuck with Ari over the years is a vision of himself and other soldiers bathing in the sea of the coast of a destroyed city. There are flares lighting up the sky, and everyone is naked. Ari then becomes obsessed with recovering his lost memories of the war. Following his meeting with Boaz, Ari talks to a friend of his who is a psychiatrist. His friend says that the traumatic nature of his memories, have caused his brain to forget them. Ari begins seeking out all of his old army comrades to fill in his missing gaps of the war. The only way he will recover from his stress to regain these memories and confront them. “Memory facts need to be unveiled for the trauma to finally enter a healing process.” (Kroustallis 133) Each friend he talks to, shares their memories of the war, which are shown as visions to the audience. These visions are the main propellers of the story in this film.
The memories of the characters serve as the narrative for the film. The visions the former soldiers have are displayed to the audience through the use of hallucination like images. For example a friend of Ari’s, tells the story of how he escaped certain death by swimming for hours in the ocean. Rather than images of struggle, his friend is shown taking a leisurely swim in the moonlight. Another friend tells of his time on an Israeli army vessel. He is shown riding on a gigantic nude female. The unrealistic nature of the film, is used to take away from the violence of the war. The film’s director, the main character Ari, wants the violence of the war to have a duller impact on the audience. This might be because the director has not got over the horrors he had to with stand during this war. He tries to soften the impact of the violent nature of war. Rather than gruesome and grotesque, war he violence in the film, is comical in nature. Fun music blares, and soldiers dance, even while people are being killed. Ari tells how an Israeli soldier ran to the middle of the street amidst gun fire, to help wounded fellow soldiers. The animated scene that depicts this event, shows the main dancing much like a ballet dancer would. Twirling around, avoid the hail storm of bullets. These scenes show how much memory can be altered over time. “The use of animation allows the film to explore the hazy line between memory and reality, truth and hallucination in a way that would be impossible in a conventional documentary.” (Delap) Traumatic events are very hard for people to think about. So the memories can alter overtime to make it easier for you to deal with them. The line between what really happened, and what you make yourself believe happened, can start to blur. This is why even though this film is presented as a documentary, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. “As a psychic topography, it amounts less to an autobiographical through-line than to the layering of a collective unconscious”. (Stewart 58) These memories have been buried deep in the subconscious of these soldiers. The horrors of war can leave a mark on soldiers for decades later. My uncle fought in the Vietnam War when he was a teenager. He still has recurring nightmares about what he saw. He unsuccessfully tried to repress these memories, but learned that it is better to deal with them head on. In the film, Ari seems unable to tackle these memories head on. The reason behind it centers on the guilt Ari holds for a massacre that took place.
When Ari finally regains the facts from the past, he remembers his role in a massacre, which fills him with guilt. The massacre took place in Beirut. After the Israeli forces invaded the shores of Beirut, they created an opportunity for the Christian Phalange to raid the refugee camps. The Phalange, were the allies to Israel in the war. They were angered that their president had been killed, and thus planned to retaliate against who they thought were the perpetrators. The images of the innocent Palestinians being rounded up from the camps and being lead to the slaughter begin to flood back to Ari. He remembers how Israeli soldiers were not taking part in the killing, but they were not stopping it either. In the film, the Israelis form a guard around the Phalanges, allowing them to carry out their plans. Ari “was present at the atrocities, but only on the outskirts, standing guard with fellow Israeli soldiers at the perimeter of the camps, looking the other way during the orgy of executions.” (Stewart 61) Ari never fired a bullet, but decades later he still laborers the guilt for what would take place. His vision he had of himself bathing in the water, was his subconscious attempt to assuage himself of the guilt he felt over the events. He was attempting to wash the guilt off from himself and forget that the whole thing happened. Bystanders routinely feel guilty for not stepping in and stopping acts of violence and atrocities. However they do not feel compelled to step in, because they are not the ones being harmed. The famous poem from Pastor Niemöller depicts this notion “first they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist… Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” During the Holocaust, millions of people were rounded up and killed in a genocide of historical proportions. Many people stood by and did not speak up. The poem by the Pastor says that if you do not stand up for others, who will be left to stand up for you. Ari and his fellow Israeli soldiers did nothing to stop the massacre. In fact Ari participated in the lighting of flares. The flares allowed the Phalanges to continue their operations even into the darkness.
It is clear that Ari stills feels guilt for lighting the flares decades later. These are the same flares that he sees in his visions. Ari discusses this guilt with his psychiatrist friend. His friend says that Ari should not feel guilt. “You can't remember the massacre because in your opinion, the murderers and those around them are the same circle. You felt guilty at the age of 19. Unwillingly, you took on the role of the Nazi. You were there firing flares, but you didn't carry out the massacre.” (Waltz With Bashir) The movie makes the claim that the reason the massacres in the camps affected Ari so much was it’s connected to the Nazi camps. Ari says that his parents were in those camps, so naturally he lives with those memories. He has grown up being told of the horrific events of the Holocaust. Many of the Israeli soldiers, were directly if not indirectly, affected by the Holocaust. So it would make sense that this massacre in the camps would have a lasting effect on them. The film places the blame for the massacre that took place squarely on the shoulders of the government officials and high ranking Army officers. Ari describes how the officers were perched atop the roofs of tall buildings, thus giving them great vantage points. They could see exactly what the Phalange soldiers were doing, and they chose not to stop them. The Defense Minister, was phoned by a soldier, and he seemed unconcerned by the massacre. Ari does not seem to be able to accept responsibility for his role in this, because he believes it was his duty as a soldier to follow the orders he was given. The film seems to be saying that in light of what happened in the Holocaust, and the fact that these soldiers did not actually kill anyone, that they should not feel any guilt for what happened. They were just following orders. However what this explanation does is let the soldiers in the Holocaust off the hook. Ari and his fellow soldiers claimed ignorance, and the inability to disobey a command. There were many young German soldiers who were just following orders and helping to kill innocent civilians. While they did not fire the bullet it does not mean that they should be held any less accountable.
Ari seems at peace at the end of the film with his role in the massacre.

This is seen in the fact that the final seen of the film is real life documentary footage. Rather than in cartoon form, the audience is subjected to real life violence. “There is no formal capitulation to routine verité, as some viewers have objected, in this plummet through a hyperbolic, computer-assisted imaginary to the analogue real; nothing pat about the 180-degree turn from show-stopping graphics to a straightforward graphic violence.” (Stewart 62) The return the reality of the situation is abrupt. One moment the screen is filled with cartoon images, the next we see real people suffering. Had the movie been a straight forward documentary, rather than animated, I believe it would have been tougher to accept the director’s point of view in film. If the audience had seen civilians dying through the film, rather than animated characters dancing and strumming their gun like a guitar, there would have been less sympathy for the main character’s plight. It is tough to connect with a character, while innocent people are being murdered

onscreen.
The film Waltz with Bashir, follows one soldier’s attempt to recover memories he lost of a war. The director of the film, who is also the main character, tells the story in the context that our memories can be altered, especially by traumatic events. This is particularly true whenever you feel guilt for suffering that you believe occurred because of you. The film, while subjective, is a powerful reminder of the destructive nature of wars, particularly on soldiers, both during and following the fighting.