Folman’s Waltz

TO THE EDITORS:

I agree with many aspects of Ilan Avisar’s review of Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir (“Dancing Solo in the Lebanese Mud,” AZURE 36, Spring 2009). Avisar is right, for example, to argue that Israeli cinema is, across the board, political in nature, and particularly so in the case of Israeli war films. Folman’s documentary is merely another example of this phenomenon.

However, any analysis of Waltz with Bashir must differentiate between the two distinct parts of the film: The one that deals primarily with the absence of knowledge, and comprises hallucinations, nightmares, and repressed memories of the Sabra and Shatila massacre; and the one concerned with obtaining knowledge, specifically through a series of interviews with other people present when the massacres took place. Avisar, for the purpose of analyzing Folman’s depiction of the national-political context for the events in question, treats the film as a unified whole. I think he is wrong to do so.

Like many “artists as wartime witnesses” before him, Folman seeks to present his subjective view of the events as against the “official,” collective narrative. Yet even a cursory viewing of the film makes clear that no conclusions about that collective narrative can be drawn from the efforts of a traumatized individual to come to terms with his trauma.

Indeed, the protagonist’s shell-shocked, phlegmatic state gives the entire first part of the film an air of unreality. Combined with a clearly apocalyptic aesthetic, the nightmares, hallucinations, and repressed memories presented here make any attempt at distinguishing between fact and fiction futile. We must relate to this part of the film as we would to the testimony of one who did not actually experience war, but nonetheless dreamed that he did (much like the protagonist of Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 film Shoulder Arms).

The second part of the film—the testimonial part—is more problematic, as it purports to fill in the missing details of time, place, and event, and so provide an accurate picture of them. Clearly, Folman struggled with two competing instincts: the need for self-flagellation—by which he may curry favor with his European financiers and audience—and the need to be true to his experiences and feelings. Not surprisingly, the result is awkward and contrived: Scenes and characters look as though the animation has been thrust upon them.

And yet, an accurate picture of events does emerge. Avisar justifiably compares the allegorical images of Palestinian banishment and murder to the actions of the Nazis against the Jews; however, he disregards the fact that the murderers were in fact Christian Phalangists, and the victims Palestinian Muslims. The remote observers were the Jewish Israelis.

This scene, moreover, corresponds according to Folman to another massacre that occurred in the region, this one of Muslims killing Christians: the Armenian massacre by the Ottomans that began in 1915. Then, too, the world sat back and did nothing.

Israel—that is, Israeli soldiers, who are considered Westerners and foreigners in the Middle East today—symbolizes, in Folman’s view, the nations of the world that remained silent, just as we did, when the massacres in Rwanda, the Congo, and Darfur all occurred. As such, they too are partners in the crime of inaction, and they too bear responsibility for the tragedy.

Thus Folman, in his elusive way, and under cover of nightmares and hallucinations, constructs a political manifesto reminiscent of an indictment of guilt—although one directed less toward himself than toward the entire enlightened world. By separating the film into two parts, Folman distinguishes between what was and what shouldn’t have been, to everyone’s satisfaction. Presumably, this is one of the reasons the film was so well-received internationally. As for Israel, Folman’s opinions, as antiwar as they are, were ultimately directed toward our national common denominator—the desire for peace—with which no one would dare disagree.

Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan

Sapir Academic College of the Negev, Beersheva

Kibbutzim College, Tel Aviv

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