Waltz to Peace

Clearly anticipating the start of the Obama Era on Tuesday and maybe hoping that by cooling off now they keep him as a friend, Israel has declared a unilateral ceasefire while keeping their troops stationed in Gaza. While I commend the ceasefire and understand that it made more sense for them to do it themselves rather than as the result of negotiation with Hamas, I don't hold much hope of it lasting. Hamas or some Palestinian whose family has been killed by Israeli bombing or gunfire will strike, Israel with strike back...we've all seen this dance before.

I don't have the intestinal fortitude to get into a huge discussion of Israel re-occupation of Gaza, as I have my own conflicted feelings about it. On one hand, Hamas is an Iranian-backed terrorist/political organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and they clearly brought this response upon themselves by firing rockets at Israeli home in violation of the previous ceasefire or perhaps to take advantage of its end. Israel, on the other hand, attacks Hamas where they have embedded themselves with regular citizens already living in degraded conditions due to the control of the border by Israel, bringing holy hell down upon many innocent people along with the more guilty.

It is in this context that Waltz with Bashir arrives with so timely a release, a view from the Israeli side that is fraught with guilt, pain, and a clear plea for the end of violence against civilians. It is the story of a former Israeli soldier (service is, of course, mandatory for all Israeli citizens with some sometimes galling exceptions) who is trying to recover his memory of events two decades earlier, when he was stationed by the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the incident when Ariel Sharon allowed the Lebanese Christian Phalangists, blood-crazed from the murder of their leader, Bashir, into the camps to massacre Muslim civilians -- men, women, children.

While such a soul-searching by a nation still under siege is remarkable, what makes the film even more remarkable and even unmissable is it's form. Made over the course of four years, Waltz with Bashir is an entirely new genre of film, the animated documentary:



Filmmaker Ari Folman is telling his own story, filming and rotoscoping his fellow veterans, creating a graphic novel on film that's somewhere between the very moving comic book reportage of Joe Sacco and the experimental Waking Life. Folman's vision is at times magical or humorous, but most of all it is relateable. By using the ostensibly distancing format he ends up drawing us closer, and sets us up for the tragic punchline of real footage, the kind that the most repressed memories are made of.

Here's to the candor and artistry of Folman and those like him who would seek to beat swords into ploughshares. As we stand poised on the edge of what so many around the world hope and pray is a new era, may their voices be those that are triumphant.