Remembering a past marked by death. By CATHERINE BISLEY.

A DOG RUNS. One by one more dogs join it. They converge in a mass of slather and snarl. They race through terrified blue streets to Boaz. Twenty-six, he tells Ari in an early morning bar. I couldn’t kill people so they had me shoot dogs. There are always twenty-six dogs in my dream because that’s how many I killed. Don’t you have flashbacks to Lebanon?

So Waltz with Bashir begins. Through the stories of his military buddies – now all middle aged – Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman embarks on a quest for lost memory of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Unplugging blocks and filling in the spaces, the film’s structure reflects his cerebral purpose. And what lies at the core? Under the command of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Army abetted and ignored the massacre of Palestinians by Phalangist militia at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. This animated documentary / memoir is virtuosic, hammering.

One soldier recounts swimming out to sea to escape death: the dark waves rise and fall around him, light pricks indicate the distant shore, a bomb sends a shudder through the water. Fantasy and reality coalesce in single moments: Folman obsesses about death and watches his own funeral take place in the middle of the aircraft carrier that takes him back to Beirut. He wanders Beirut airport terminal with the excitement of impending travel before he realises the planes outside are bombed wrecks and duty free has been looted. A blue ocean is washed with orange as a boat explodes. Reflected light glares off the foil-covered dead. Folman’s own dream, predominantly in yellow and black, repeats throughout the film: three naked men rise from the water and move toward the city where red flares drift down. There is an unsettling lyricism; the bodies move with a dislocated fluidity. The three dress and come up off the beach – wailing women and children fill the street.

Present day Ari visits a friend, Carmi, in Holland. When Carmi points out his impressive property Ari is surprised “All that from selling falafel?” Humour is used in striking counterpoint. There is something intrinsically funny about animated pornography: “Fast forward, fast forward” says an inanimate and balding commander as the German plumber sorts out the pipes at an increasing rate of speed. The commander then gives orders: they’ve got wind of a suicide bomber in a red Merc. How do we know which car, do we just shoot them all? asks a soldier. The commander looks at the soldier like he’s stupid. Within each frame the background and foreground seem slightly disconnected, paralleling the divergences in tone; the film accumulates an uneasy power.

“Pachouli was not just a fragrance, it was a way of life.” In this incongruous way we are introduced to fellow soldier Frenkel. Elsewhere, in the scene from which the title of the film is taken, Frenkel dances on an intersection amidst a hail of bullets, machine gun jittering into the sniper filled hotels above. Preceding this moment, renowned war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai walks upright and unflinching through heavy fire. Ben-Yishai is interviewed; charismatic, he draws you in even in his animated form. He describes calling Ariel Sharon at his ranch to say he has got wind of something bad happening at Sabra and Shatila. Sharon fobs him off. Ben-Yishai describes what he finds at the refugee camp the next day.

Waltz with Bashir shows a strange and terrifying party of death. It is loud with the reckless hype of frightened young men off to kill and be killed: tanks full of them roll over the Israeli-Lebanese border to the rock of Good Morning Lebanon. Lyrics include “Tear me to pieces” and “You bleed to death in my arms.” There were a few moments when I paused, drew out of the sublime animation style and asked myself: is this just some sort of self appeasement posing as art?

No. The end of Waltz with Bashir leaves no doubt as to what Folman’s intention is in making the film. His restored memory detonates something universal. It is devastating to experience.

See also:
» Remembered Shades: Waltz with Bashir