After watching it, I was greatly shocked, so I was fascinated by animation documentaries recently. I wrote a superficial analysis of this film in a course paper, and I hope to correct the shortcomings.
1. 26 dingoes - a revenge nightmare
The film begins with a follow-up shot of a wild dog in an empty and desolate street, and then more wild dogs are drawn, each with a fierce and crazy look. They rampage on the road and finally stop in front of a building. , barking in the face of the window sill, when a person appeared on the window sill. This passage is about a nightmare that the director's friend Boaz Ryan has had since 20 years ago. At the beginning of the war, he went to a Lebanese village in search of wanted Palestinians, with the barking of dogs. People woke up and the fugitives ran away. Boaz, who dared not shoot at people, was ordered to shoot the dogs. He said he remembered what each one looked like, where it was shot, and the look it looked like when it died. .
Wild dogs are innocent victims in the war, symbolizing that the innocent dead in the war are all flesh and blood creatures, echoing the theme of the film, and also expressing the nightmare the war brings to people. Boaz is the first narrator in the film. Although this dream is not a battlefield, it has the tension and cruelty of the battlefield, which is fascinating. Boaz's question to the director: "There are no flashes and nightmares about war, have you never thought about it?" It triggered the director Forman's retrospect of the memory of the war. Judging from the follow-up interviews in the film, Boaz was the The only interviewee who was plagued by war nightmares, while the other interviewees even experienced more brutal scenes such as massacres, showed more of the absence of memory and the avoidance of memory from traumatic experiences. The opening scene of wild dogs rampages also echoes the pun at the end of the film: war, for the people, is full of sins and threats like the crazy dog spirits that suddenly strike in a peaceful life.
2. Flare and Golden Beach - Combination Illusion
"Me" and two soldiers were lying in the sea, looking at the ruins of the houses illuminated by flash bombs on the shore again and again, slowly getting dressed and going ashore in a golden world, women and children who were terrified and desperate to find their relatives emerged among the houses. This scene appears three times in the film, and it is also a clue in the film that expresses the director's memory of the war. The first time is when Foreman talks with Boaz at the beginning of the film and his thoughts are pulled back to the war 20 years ago; the second time is when Foreman asked his friend if he was there when the massacre was carried out, but the friend did not remember; and the third time was The scene was narrated by a friend who was with him at the time, who said he was fascinated, which led to an investigation into the real scene of the Holocaust at the end of the film.
In my impression, the sea is a symbol of fear and disgust, while the massacre left Forman with a psychological shadow. The memory avoids the real dark side of the massacre, so that Forman only remembers flash bombs and the terrifying sea. The director conducts exploration and investigation based on the only memory illusion of the war. When it first appears, the audience will be full of doubts and curiosity about this surreal scene, but as the memory investigation progresses, it will be found that beaches, ruins, flash bombs, Desperate people, these elements will overlap with past war experiences. When the massacre happened, Foreman was watching the flash bomb on the roof, his consciousness was out of state, and there was no other way for the young soldier to obey the order. Dehumanizing things were happening around him, and through the perspective of a large number of bystanders, According to word of mouth, everyone's reaction to the event has become numb, and there is no essential difference between the indifferent viewer and the executioner of the massacre, and morally no one is willing to admit that he is a member of the massacre, so memory selects this part. Oblivion and collage make the director more believe in the version of himself at sea during the massacre.
3. Wandering and Pleasure - Romanticizing Memory
The film has repeatedly described the memories of traveling before the war that is full of happy atmosphere, and the first half of the film shows the dream of the soldier Camille encountering the "Goddess of the Sea" in the ship heading to the battlefield. In addition to mobilizing the audience's emotions, more With the pleasure and leisure before the war begins, a strong gap is formed with the fact of the brutal war that is about to take place, and the true communication of evasive traumatic memories, after every romanticized imagination, a heavy cannonball shatters the beautiful fantasy.
In the dream of "Goddess of the Sea", the naked woman represents a peaceful and gentle harbor in the heart. The air-raid shells shattered the peaceful blue picture, and turned it into an orange-red full of anxiety and turmoil; Forman and his comrades will go to the battlefield to see Travel, take pictures, sing and tell jokes when passing the border of José Hanikale, watch the scenery along the way with the tanks as a safe protective shell, in the soothing song of the lumbering huge tanks marching through the narrow blocks, crushing vehicles and destroying the walls, At this time, the picture has linked the idle soldiers in the tank with the external environment. The bulky tank symbolizes a self-constructed safety shield in memory, which numbs the pleasure while causing catastrophic damage to the external environment until the commander. The shot shattered the beautiful barrier; when he arrived in Beirut, Forman was wandering in the waiting hall, thinking about which city to go to play, when the camera pulled back to reality, fragmented planes, unmanned shopping malls, and flight notices that have not been updated for months The sound of cards, explosions and shelling crept in, shattering the imagination of a peaceful life.
When Foreman traced back the memory of the war, he found that he could not remember the detailed scenes of the war, but he could clearly remember where he went every time he went on military leave. It tells the story of the soothing classical music running through when he encountered a boy with an RPG during the march. Frank seemed to be wandering. With the sound of "Frank!", the boy who was instantly beaten to death gave the audience another blow, Because the boy represents innocence and innocence, the audience will feel angry and puzzled in such a ridiculous and helpless dramatic scene, and ask the reason for the war itself.
4. Dance a crazy waltz - exaggerating memory
There are three kills to fast-paced music, the first in the bombing of Saida, the second in Beirut, and the third in Frank's waltzing frenzy against the surrounding blocking fire. In the two bombings, the joyful rock and explosive shooting cooperated with each other, presenting a game-like absurd comedy effect, showing the crazy irony of the war, and echoing the feelings of the young soldiers present about the war at that time, using guns as guitars, Scared, numb, and aimlessly venting youth. The "cool" visual perception created by these passages forms a stronger contrast with the actual shooting scene at the end of the film, satirizing the dramatic and absurd historical reality, and has the effect of awakening people from entertainment and reflecting on human nature.
In the shooting scene of Frank under the waltz corresponding to the title, because he was suppressed by the enemy fire from all directions, he made good use of the MAG machine gun and only had one Galil's Frank grabbed the MAG machine gun from the hands of his comrades. At this time, the music gradually started, Along with Frank's machine gun as the main voice, accompanied by complex camera movements before the gunfire fades away, the waltz and narration take the audience to an omniscient third-person narration, with a huge, bullet-filled Bashir behind Frank. Portrait, soon Bashir's Falangist supporters will launch a vindictive Sabra-Shatila massacre, "Waltzing with Bashir" alludes to the absurdity and madness of revenge wars.
Several times in the film, it is mentioned that journalists and civilians face the battlefield in front of them as "like watching a war movie", which ironically illustrates our subconscious paralyzed mentality when we watch the suffering of others. Almost all war movies are anti-war movies. war attitude, and almost all war movies use war scenes to make the audience feel excited and pleasant to watch, even in this film, this ethical problem cannot be escaped. However, as the director said in the interview, he hopes to expose the crimes of war in the most plain way possible. This film uses the subjective memory of the witnesses as the narrative subject, and presents the surreal spectacle of the subconscious, which points to the inner trauma and pain. There are crazy surreal scenes, and the use of live footage in the post-holocaust refugee camps at the end of the film brings everything back to reality, reminding people that all the madness and horror is real, not for Israel's then Defense Minister Sharon. It is aimed at presenting this history as objectively as possible, expressing the absurd and brutal reflections on human wars and peaceful initiatives.
references:
[1] Xu Xiaotang. Telling the Trauma in the World of Nonfiction Stories: On the Cross-Media Narrative of Graphic Novels and Animated Documentaries [J]. Contemporary Cinema, 2021(01):84-90.
[2] Zhu Jingwen. Interventional "Deep Drawing": An Analysis of the Creation Path of Animation Anthropology Films - Taking "Waltz with Bashir" as an Example [J]. Contemporary Animation, 2019(01):118- 120.
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