Ari Folman’s tour de force Waltz With Bashir is a mesmerizing visual experience that also packs an intense emotional wallop. Taking the form of an animated documentary, Folman narrates this searing portrait of war-time life with fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon in order to reconstruct his own memories of his military involvement during the conflict. The hallucinatory nightmarescape that Folman and his technical crew have created is nothing short of astonishing, and it’s truly unlike any film that you’ve ever seen. This isn’t rotoscope animation like Richard Linklater’s stunning neo-noir/sci-fi mash-up A Scanner Darkly, nor does it have the rounded-edge, glistening sophistication of a Pixar film. Waltz With Bashir is visceral, rough, demanding, and shocking; it’s a vision of “war as hell” in a manner that’s never been captured before, and that could likely never be repeated.
Podcasting Them Softly 