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</script></div>{/googleAds}Memory is a funny, yet treacherous thing. More often than not, it completely fails us when we should remember specific events and deceives us with assumptions based on the experiences of others we mistake as our own and if our journey to half-forgotten memories is anything like that of filmmaker Ari Folman's (an Israeli veteran of the First Lebanon War) then god help us all. Yes, memory makes the Matter in the foreign language film Waltz with Bashir, an attempt to chronicle the affects of war through animation using a documentary-style format that provides the audience a trip made all the more real with its sense of style and purpose. There are times throughout this film when you can actually hear the cadence of its message beneath the marching boots of its soldiers. It is that powerful of a film.

Waltz With BashirThe film starts with a pack of wild dogs running down the street in search of someone or something. Soon, Folman's narration kicks in and, in doing so, provides the audience with a metaphor - the past, specifically Folman's role in the First Lebanon War, is a pack of rabid dogs hell-bent on gnawing at the flesh of his present. Confused by his own lack of detailed memory and plagued only by a dream of bathing nude with two other soldiers as flares descend upon Lebanon, Folman searches for a full recovery of a memory he has completely blocked out. What did he do during the massacre? What was his role? Was he even there? The answers to these questions become the centerpiece of the narrative, yet the narrative is constructed much like a documentary would be as a series of interviews with his friends (all present in some faction during the massacre with some claiming to know what he did and where he was).

The film and its brilliant animation is spectacular and, as the Folman's memory becomes clear through the interviews with other veterans, the total ambiance of the animation glows eerily as if to suggest the surreal harshness of his actual experience with war until all is revealed in the final and frighteningly real footage that the film closes with. This ending, and the realization of a veteran after the fact of war, outshines even the most solid of war films. It is no wonder that Waltz with Bashir was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film. For the waltz - the clever movement of man and machine gun - stays with you long after the credits have passed.


Component Grades
Movie
DVD
4 stars
4 stars
DVD Experience
4 stars

DVD

DVD Details:

Screen Formats: 1.78:1

Subtitles: English, English SDH

Language and Sound: Closed Captioned; Hebrew: Dolby True HD English: Dolby True HD

Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; director's commentary; behind-the-scenes featurettes; making-of featurette; cast and crew interviews.

Supplements:

Commentary

  • Feature-length commentary track with with Director Ari Folman. Presented in English, the director speaks of his multiple roles, including directing, producing, writing, and serving as the primary protagonist in the film.

Featurettes

  • Q&A With Director Ari Folman (480p, 9:19)
  • Surreal Soldiers: Making 'Waltz With Bashir' (480p, 12:03)
  • Building the Scenes -- Animatics (480p)

BD-Live functionality

Trailers - Waltz With Bashir theatrical trailer (1080p, 2:05), and additional 1080p trailers for Persepolis; Frozen River; Synecdoche, New York; The Sky Crawlers; The International; Blood: The Last Vampire; The Counterfeiters; The Lives of Others; Casino Royale; The Da Vinci Code; and Ghostbusters.

Number of Discs: 1 with Keepcase Packaging

{pgomakase}