It's been years since i've actually enjoyed sitting through a modern war film and yet "Waltz with Bashir" managed to finally breakthrough to me. Most of which has to do with the film being animated. By being animated I believe it helped to give me a shield from the war. I was able to see the images without being totally thrown of by the reality of them. Keeping everything just a bit surreal made the film watchable and I was able to fully pay attention to the story because of it and wasn't distracted by the imagery. There was some great from the early dreams of the main proganist of him and his fellow warmen rose out of the water naked and innocent seeing the flares lighting up the night sky.
The journey of the protaganist as he tries to regain his memory of what happened during the war and what role he played in it kept me going. From interview to interview we got just a little bit more of the puzzle and all of them with such different backgrounds. Some critism I have is that I found myself more interested in how these characters were doing post war rather then just talking about how things used to be. They delve into how everyone in the present is doing but only briefly and I think the film could have benefited more by seeing a bit more of how their lives are now.
The only real major complaint I have is with the ending, It felt forceful, heavy handed, and completely unneseccary. I throughoughly enjoyed the film because of it's animation style helping me to get past what I've found so distasteful in other war movies and going to live action to show real massacre footage seemed redundant. I understood the tragedy that had occured and didn't need to see footage of little girls buried in rubble to understand it. It makes me feel as if the filmmakers didn't have enough belief that the animation was impactful enough, which just makes me feel the filmmaker wasn't unsure if animation was the best way to get the message he wanted across.
4 out of 5
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