There was some confusion over which Oscar category “Waltz With Bashir” belonged in. Best animated feature and best documentary were considered appropriate. It finally wound up in best foreign language film but lost to Japan’s “Departures.”

No matter what you want to call it, this Israeli meditation on war is a remarkable example of the art of filmmaking. It’s artistically bold, emotionally potent and unflinching in its determination to illuminate an actual atrocity.

Director and writer Ari Folman was an Israeli soldier in the Lebanon war of 1982. Folman places an animated version of himself at the center of the movie.

As the story begins, a pack of vicious dogs charges through the streets of Tel Aviv. One of Folman’s friends tells him this is a recurring dream he has as a result of the war. The dreamer had to kill 26 dogs in order to silence their warnings, and these dogs have come back to trouble his sleep.

Folman has no such dreams and no such memories, and he begins to wonder why. Thus begins a journey into his past involving old comrades-in-arms and therapists. Folman learns his memory is probably repressed because of a “dissociative event,” the result of a severe trauma.

Fearful of facing the mystery trauma, Folman forges ahead anyway and begins to clear the fog of war. His friends tell him of killing a child wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher; of a junkyard where Christian Phalangists butcher Muslims and preserve body parts in jars of formaldehyde; of killing an innocent family in an old Mercedes out of panic.

Each of these war stories brings Folman closer to his own personal horror. It occurred in 1982, following the murder of president-elect Bashir Gemayel, the hero of the Phalangists. A reprisal was believed inevitable, and it occurred in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The camps were surrounded by the Israel Defense Forces, which allowed Lebanese Christian militia into the camps. The Christians proceeded to murder men, women and children while the Israelis watched and even sent up flares to help out. The death toll remains uncertain — estimates range from 800 into the thousands. Folman was one of the watchers .

This is Israel’s My Lai Massacre reported and filmed by a journalist who appears in the movie. Unlike My Lai, this massacre sent shockwaves to the top of the Israeli government.   

“Waltz With Bashir” is brave and honest filmmaking that grapples with guilt, responsibility and the effects of war on the survivors as well as the victims.
Its top-flight animation expertly captures the surreal nature of war along with its devastating consequences. The refusal to turn it into a live-action film could have been risky. But the choice has paid off beautifully in this disturbing and haunting chronicle of the build-up to a hideous event.