"Waltz with Bashir" chooses the form of animation which is really impressive (although the previous year's "I Grow Up in Iran" was amazing enough), but it is the theme of the film that is even more impressive. Wrapping serious themes in the form of animation may seem a bit weird for viewers accustomed to Hollywood Disney-style children’s animation, but if your vision is a little wider, you will find that from Japan to West Asia, from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, cartoons have never been Children’s patents, animation forms are often used by directors as a medium for expressing ideas and conveying attitudes. The main reason lies in the limitations of animation compared to live-action shooting, and its expression space is more open and free. Last year, when the whole world was immersed in the robot utopia made by Pixar, film creators from Israel presented us with an ending without illusory love and light, mixing good and evil, beauty and ugliness, mixed with blood and tears, The true history of pain and hatred. There, the alienation of human nature, the dislocation of identity, and the loss of dignity during the war are intertwined into a complete modern tragedy. What is even more chilling is that it did not happen in the theater, but actually happened on our planet. Pixar looked into space and exchanged two robots for high box office. The Israelis looked back to the past and used the pain of a generation to atone for the nation. I dare not arbitrarily judge the value of the two works. I can only say that in laughter and cry, maybe the latter can really bring people something called "hope".
In the form of animation, "Waltz with Bashir" also chose the documentary filming mode: through a former soldier who lost his memory of war (now a film director), he reproduced the story of reorganizing his memory more than 20 years ago by visiting related witnesses. That period of history. The justice of the owner who lost his memory is the epitome of contemporary people's treatment of history. A powerful discourse of power has imprisoned this period of history, even the parties involved are no exception. Breaking through the suppression of this power discourse is exactly the reason why the protagonist of the film explores the truth. The film director used the identity of the protagonist to show the true intention of the film creation. For the reconstruction of official history, returning the historical interpretation power to the parties involved in history is like writing in Bakhtin's "Carnival" style text to resist Roland Barthes' "linguistic fascism". Therefore, the relevant personnel of the war in the movie appeared in sequence: from soldiers to reporters, using their personal experiences to restore and reconstruct history. In fact, any exploration of the past from the perspective of time and space in the present is tantamount to engraving a boat for a sword, and no memory can be completely true. The nightmare-like memories shown in the movie are trivial and personal, but when the parties in history are pushed back to the forefront of history, the contradiction between personal history and national history is instantly revealed, and war can finally surpass justice and injustice amidst the noise of all beings. The level of being denied, personal experience can finally be recognized outside the shackles of national history, and the nation can also be redeemed in escape and lies.
The film hints at a thought-provoking role transition. At the end of the film, the reporter mentioned the withered creatures who walked out of the Beirut refugee camp, with their hands raised up and their faces full of fear, just like the famous photo taken in the Jewish refugee camp in Warsaw. Once the victim has become the perpetrator, history is always so "dramatic", often making its actors at a loss what to do. And after the deserted soldier went through hardships, it turned out to be the army that deserted him to save him, and he became a coward who deserted his comrades and fled for his life alone. The film’s final transition from an animated image to a real image is far from moving from black to color at the end of "Schindler's List". On the contrary, it further compresses the originally suppressed space. This is the naked truth, and there is no room for tampering. In contrast, the sublimation of "Schindler's List" seems pretentious.
The wanton and crazy waltz, the flares slowly falling in the night, the "love ship" moving lonely in the sea... the historical memories are constantly presented, which are the nightmare that the war witnesses can't let go of for life. Numerous human body bombs, car bombs, rounds of large-scale air strikes, stones thrown at both ends of the separation wall... scenes of real tragedies are constantly unfolding. The wounds of history are still aching, and reality has already begun to pour salt on the wounds. Where is the solution? The movie tells us: not in the present, let alone in the future, but in the past. Only by facing history can we reconstruct reality; only by reconstructing reality can we hope for the future. A truly good movie is never satisfied with only reconstructing the reality of history. The real purpose of reconstructing history is to take care of the real world and reconstruct reality. Using movies to change the world, this may be the ultimate ideal of every creator who embraces movie dreams! We also have reason to believe that, in the face of this devastated world, the film may be able to do more.
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