The story tells about the massacres that took place in the Lebanon War in the 1980s. The local Christian sect washed the Palestinians with blood, and Israel can be described as an "accomplice" who sheltered, acquiesced, and even secretly promoted the massacre. The story is based on the process of director Folman's retrieving the memory of this period of joining the army. By searching for Israelis who also participated in the war in those years, this history is re-interpreted (this film is interpreted in the form of a documentary about real events, but Animations are used instead of live scenes, but this creative feature will not be discussed in this article). The trigger point for making this film was that Folman was very young when he joined the army. After many years, he found that he had forgotten everything, leaving only dreams or vague impressions of memory, and then he started this search. "Truth" tour. In this way, from the very beginning, the film explains these kinds of repressed memories from the perspective of war trauma, and occasionally through interviews with psychiatrists. Step by step, Folman finally retrieved that terrible memory and showed it to the audience "real" in the final scene.
This film tells the interviewee's mental journey indirectly or directly from each interview, each of which can be said to be a very personal story. Therefore, it not only has heavy historical, racial, and political themes, but also has a profoundly moving angle of the experience of the little people. In particular, many of the interviewees described their feelings of participating in the war in a kind of confused, dreamy, and imaginative psychological state. One of the most profound is the case cited by a psychiatrist: an Israeli soldier who was originally a photographer imagined what he saw and heard when he participated in the war as a film he used to watch on a daily basis, and used a psychological mechanism to escape from reality. One day, a terrible scene caused a great impact, the previous method of self-anaesthesia was no longer effective, and he finally broke down.
In this way, the film tells about the unique performance and even hobbies of different characters. On the surface, it is very interesting, like anecdotes in war, but the more innocuous things are related to war, the more people feel that it is a method or form that everyone pulls away from reality. In the play, Shmuel Frenkel holds a machine gun and waltzes while strafing the streets in a hail of bullets. What a beautiful and dreamy scene. In the film, there are indeed a lot of contrasts between reality and fantasy. Following the approach of discovery, confrontation, and escape, we shuttle back and forth between the two.
In any case, Folman has to retrieve his memory in the end, and the "truth" will come back before him, and these events that have happened also perfectly explain his dreams and images. The climax of the film is also the fact that the end of the film replaces the animation with a real documentary segment, so that people can see the real scene after the massacre. The director deliberately played the crying of the women, which lasted a long time without artificial decoration; these widows who had lost their loved ones were crying while walking on the street, and their voices were shrill. Then there is the real picture of the corpse and the field, and its oppressive feeling really makes the audience uneasy (I had a thought that I didn't want to watch it any more, or I didn't know how to respond, and I felt a little bit clueless even when I cried). These clips lasted a long time and were placed at the end of the film in an original way. The sensual and sensual portraits were displayed in front of the audience's eyes, and their impact was self-evident. The film ends "quietly" like this, but that kind of "quietness" is like a moment of silence for the dead after the catastrophe, but it is still shrouded in horror and trauma.
Therefore, the end of the film is still very important for the rendering power of the whole film. But before the horrific episode appeared, the writers already had the right plot arrangement. The film is more suspenseful in the near-end part. The interviewees or the director carefully recall what they had done before and during the massacre - such as the rumors they heard, the strangeness of the deployment of the army, and the "accomplices" who participated ignorantly. "Operation, or how to report to superiors, national leaders, and try to prevent this catastrophe from happening - to trace the dark truth piece by piece.
A film that can win numerous awards must have considerable strength. Even people unfamiliar with the political, racial, and historical background of the story can deeply appreciate the horror of this massacre after reading "Waltz with Bashir". It's animation, but it also mixes real images, and when combined, it renders amazingly. It's a successful "documentary" that lets viewers know the truth about a piece of history. However, the characters in the film have a strong flavor, the narrative layout has distinct ups and downs, and is carried in animation, so it is also an excellent creative film.
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