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Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2008 > May > 15 > Entry
Our Man in Cannes: ‘Waltz with Bashir’
The “Kung Fu Panda” screening was the second animated feature premiere — as part of the official selections — in two days in Cannes, a rarity.
On Wednesday night, Israeli director Ari Folman showed “Waltz with Bashir,” a serious but non-traditional documentary looking back 25 years when Israel was involved in a war in Lebanon.
Folman said he didn’t want to do the documentary with a middle-aged guy looking into the camera, so he went with animation. But he didn’t use the Richard Linklater technique of rotoscoping, employed in the Austinite’s “A Scanner Darkly” and “Waking Life.”
In essence, the story revolves around a former Israeli soldier who begins to question what happened — and his involvement in — the massacre of Arabs in refugee camps in the early 1980s.
On the surface, the film may be seen as anti-Israeli, but that would be a limited reading of what’s on screen.
Instead, it’s passionately anti-war, questioning the point of sending soldiers into another country to shoot and kill. There’s no mistaking that Folman thinks such conduct is utterly banal.
The movie ends with actual documentary footage of the killings. And it’s a powerful moment, making this one of the contenders for the Palme d’Or.
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