Waltzing with Bashir: The Reality That Cameras Can't Capture

Waltz with Bashir

This isn't the first time someone has tried to combine animation and documentary formats, or even the first time such films have won international awards. There was a short film that justly claimed to be an animated documentary, Ryan (2004) by Canadian animator Chris Landreth, which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Before that, it has won at least three other film festival awards for best animation, best short film and so on. However, despite its reputation, people still discuss its gorgeous CG effects, animation technology, topicality of the subject itself and surreal image design, silently ignoring the label it puts on itself: documentary. It silently said that I am an animated documentary, not a pure animation. However, it seems that even the creators themselves are a little guilty, and they want to bundle a documentary filmed by traditional methods, "About Ryan (Alter Egos)" when the DVD is released, and let Chris and Ryan sit on the camera separately. Before, talk about their own life, talk about their own thoughts, as if the two of them couldn't talk enough in that fourteen-minute clip. Despite the superior quality of the film itself, Ryan's positioning of itself didn't raise enough conversations. Until 2008, Israeli director Ari Folman brought his Waltz with Bashir. Bashir)", not only swept 43 awards, 57 nominations, more surprisingly, the pile of nominations and won awards not only include "Best Animated Feature", but also "Best Picture" ", "Best Foreign Language Film" (such as an Oscar nomination). I don't know how many animation directors have ever, at least for a moment, had the dream of beating live-action movies, although most people know that animation and live-action movies are different art forms, and there is absolutely no need to compare them. And Folman, a director who was born in film and TV documentary, with a heavy blow, deeply shook the "animation" that was born to coexist with "fiction" and the "documentary" that has always been regarded as the strongest position of "real" "barriers between. "Why would you make a documentary in animation?" In hundreds of interviews, hundreds of reporters, repeated this question to Folman hundreds of times, even if they had already gotten the answer from other press releases. They just want to hear him say: "Because I can't tell this story any other way. It's the only way." The nightmare of the dog chase. He claimed it had something to do with their experience in the Lebanon war (the fifth Middle East war) 20 years ago. Folman, however, found his memory of the war largely absent. In order to reconstruct his own experience and restore part of the truth about the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabara and Shatila, Folman interviewed his comrades, several soldiers, psychological counselors, and the first war reporter who entered the scene after the massacre. This film was made by reproducing his own experiences of seeking visits, what the interviewers told, as well as the hallucinations and nightmares he encountered when he regained his memory. So this is first and foremost a deeply personal documentary about Folman himself going through PSTD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome) and rebuilding his memories. He also emphasized on various occasions that "this is not a political movie". ——However, since the film has been released and has caused repercussions, this is not something he can say for a long time. Israel promotes this film in the name of the country and sends it to exhibitions everywhere, dare to say that it is not showing its cultural tolerance in a big gesture? Criticisms outside of honor also point to the film's lack of self-reflection on Israel's war behavior, and even the suspicion of glorifying the Israeli army. The Lebanese classmate in my class, as a national of the invaded country (this classmate lived in Beirut, which was bombed that year, and was attacked again in 2006), bluntly said that this film is very problematic in terms of position (very problematic). The issue of position, however, is by no means unique to the film. There is no work without a stand in the world, let alone involving such a sensitive subject, controversy is inevitable. "Authenticity" is the most controversial quality of documentaries. Here, it is impossible to make an absolutely politically correct discussion and comment on it. It can only be said that the most unexpected part of this film is the "reality" constructed under its worldview. As something completely created by the author out of thin air, the most fundamental difference between painting and photos/videos is that there is no direct indexicality to reality. The so-called "indicative", at the beginning of photography technology, specifically refers to the image of the real object on the light-sensitive negative film, which is formed by chemical burning on the negative film, which is pure material; Autocomplete is regarded by Bazin and other scholars of photographic ontology as the most objective reproduction of reality, and it plays an important temporal role in reappearing the past that has disappeared. While framing and editing can also guide/mislead the viewer, indicative has always been the most important feature of the image recording. However, this "indicative" has long been challenged or even disappeared after the development of digital technology. All images, all shapes and colors, have been converted into timeless binary information, which can be easily transferred and changed at any time. If you don't speak human words, this has made a theoretical foreshadowing for the academic circles and a psychological foreshadowing for the audience for the emergence of the mixed genre of animated documentary. Speaking in human words, as Folman said in an interview: "How do you tell me which is more real? My animated image, or any camera or TV screen of me made up of pixels?" This question Currently unsolved. Because there is no solution, it is difficult for anyone to hit a straight ball to object to the authenticity of the documentary. The only full paper makes the argument that the film uses a lot of fictional techniques in the reenactment of the scene, such as reverse shots, subjective shots, and of course those deliberately satirical soundtracks… … This is not the only thing that made traditional documentarians frown during the making of the film. Don't talk about the stuntman issue. In order to protect the privacy of the subject, this situation is allowed. The film features two interviewees, Boaz and Carmi, who use the voices and images of other actors in their place. Although the characters in "Ryan" have been completely artistically processed, the recordings are at least live recordings, and a sharp ear can tell the source Unclean background noise. However, all of Bashir's interviews are done in dedicated recording studios - although the interview locations depicted in the film vary. When Folman was invited to a seminar at the University of Chicago, he explained this: When watching animation, the human ear is very sensitive to background noise, so it must be avoided. Moreover, when filming a documentary normally, the director and the subject have a special sense of intimacy and presence. For example, you follow a person to meet his girlfriend ten years ago, and witness this moment with him. There is an emotion in this shot. But doing animation is different. You say a word, the animator will do it for a month. The sense of presence is long gone, so why pretend? The controversy brought about by this embarrassing positioning issue is also a major reason why the film has gained public attention. However, in the field of artistic creation, practice always takes precedence over theory. Arguing is normal, and even a value in itself. Back to the form of animation. Compared with live-action shooting, the biggest feature of animation is that the creator has absolute control over the picture. Everything that appears in the foreground and background, the lighting and color matching of each frame, is not unintentional. Therefore, as a documentary that records "personal experiences" as claimed by the director himself, animation has a natural advantage in expressing the director's subjective feelings. It can be said that it shoots what exists in the mind of the subject/director. For a film that mainly shows the psychological state of the subject and reflects the process of acquiring knowledge, the importance of subjective truth is obviously greater than that of objective truth. In terms of painting style, the film takes the line of realistic imagery and surreal colors: unadorned thick lines, thick black shadows, high contrast, and unpleasant complementary colors everywhere. These two pictures are from Boaz's dream and Folman's dream. Color is crucial. This iconic yellow color appears in almost all killing-related scenes, more often than the traditional blood, as if the sun shone on the earth in place of death. This can't be more clearly reflected in the signal flare scene at the end. It was also at that moment that the audience understood why this color was chosen as the tone of the entire film. It was perhaps the brightest color on the battlefield in Folman's own memory. Supplemented by the gloomy violin soundtrack, his nightmares appeared several times throughout the film, causing great spiritual pollution to the audience. And those scenes with the most normal colors, or unnaturally bright scenes, besides being "on-the-ground" reenactments of interviews, are mostly associated with satire. They're basically paired with upbeat or soft background music, showing how soldiers playfully kill and destroy streets, creating an absurd play on the battlefield. In the style of black humor, it resembles the second half of Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket". A pop-up vector-style parody of former Israeli Prime Minister (then Defense Minister) Sharon. Even the picture flaws caused by lack of funds and technical constraints were incorporated into the picture as narrative elements. Anyone who is used to watching Pixar, Disney, or even a slightly more conscientious Japanese TV animation, the first reaction to seeing this film must be "so rough". The 3D action and 2D rendering technology used in the film can't get rid of its sense of incongruity even now, when the budget is sufficient and the technology is passable. The more popular works in Japanese animation that have adopted this form in recent years include "Knights of Sidonia" and "Ajin". They all look great in big scenes, but the details of the characters' expressions and actions are stiff, so they have to be covered up by adding light and shadow filters. In Bashir, this problem is especially acute, manifested in the layering of foreground and background, and the rigidity (or a very unrealistic sense of coherence) of the characters' movements. Although this sense of incongruity can be weakened with the gradual increase in the sense of substitution during the viewing process, in some scenes, these flaws in the picture coincidentally show a ghostly effect. Whether it’s the women who file out of Folman’s nightmare or the refugees who stumble out with their arms raised in the reporter’s dim memories, their final image of the living dead is ultimately unified with the overall style of the film. This kind of work done on the picture means that the amount of information in each frame of the film itself is very large compared to the normal shooting of the documentary. And this kind of information is often not conveyed through dialogue/monologue, but directly conveyed through the style of the picture, and it is indescribable in itself. This is indeed a major feature of fictional films, the basic quality of animation, and the only way to go beyond the so-called "reality" that the camera can capture. Therefore, compared with other documentaries, the author's attitude and reflection of the so-called "facts" will appear more obscure and ambiguous. This makes the audience's ability to read the image more important, and the audience has more room for judgment than normal documentaries. For example, in individual film reviews, someone suggested that the film deliberately ignored the fact that the Israeli army actually knew the massacre was going on but did not act. However, in fact, in the reporter's recollection, both the atmosphere of the picture and the reaction of the characters have already hinted that the top management has concealed something, but it is not as clear as a revealing documentary. The connection between the Israeli army, the Lebanese Falangist Party, and Bashir's assassination and their roles in the massacre, the so-called restoration of historical truth, ultimately relies on the logical connection established by the audience between the events. Because, like most documentaries, the film doesn't have the clear thread in its narrative that most fictional feature films have. The film, the result of Folman's reconstruction work, is actually a collection of the memories of multiple subjects. Folman is only responsible for presenting these memories, which are not even true or false, and the reality to the subjects of the experiences behind them. For example, the paragraph "Waltzing with Bashir" that determines the title of the film is actually the most magical, symbolizing and critical at the same time. This seemingly unrelated and fictitious scene actually hints at the essence of the whole thing—an excuse, a fig leaf, a political deal, or something else. This is selected after giving up the objective scenes that can be captured by normal cameras, and it is true in the eyes of these people. In addition, Folman's conversation with the psychologist in the film also involves a discussion about the "camera". The counselor recounted the experience of another veteran, saying that his way of protecting himself psychologically was to assume he was watching everything through a camera. This allows him to isolate himself from the brutal environment and his role, and to see everything as a bystander. However, he still ends up having a mental breakdown, and what he sees shatters his imaginary camera when he sees horses being tortured for no reason. This story may imply that the camera's colleague in "objective recording" is also a device for spectatorizing the audience. The animation form, on the other hand, goes beyond the camera and is a way of immersing and even imposing the subjective reality of the subject on the viewer. Folman himself has his own understanding of animation forms. It's directly related to his handling of the film's ending, which has also drawn some polarized reviews. From the interview, it seems that Folman's own understanding of animation is still conservative. Of course, this conservative tendency is inseparable from market bias. The final end scene, from his own point of view, is to make sure the audience understands that, even with animation, the things the film describes, especially those who die, are real. Because he is very aware of the inherent "unreal"ness of animation in people's prejudices. In addition, he believes that the animation format can attract a younger audience. (However, this is of no use. In addition to being rated as 15+ or even 12+ in a few bold countries, most of the film is rated as 18+, and the American Film Institute is rated as R.) Because he personally thinks, teenagers When watching even anti-war themed war films, the focus is often on the heroic appearance or brotherhood of the protagonist, and even yearning for the battlefield. However, he hopes those young people will never want to be there when they watch the film. (“If you watch and look at them (a lot of anti-war movies) in the eyes of youngsters… you might miss the whole point. Because you might think: Wow! Yes it’s tough! …But look at the friendship aspect! …Look at the real man!

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