Ari Folman
Valzer con Bashir

THE REVIEW

Many films (the majority) don't even deserve a line of review, others cannot be described in words, and "Waltz with Bashir," by the Israeli Ari Folman, is one of these, but I will try nonetheless to describe it to encourage you to enjoy one of the most beautiful films in the entire history of cinema, in my opinion.

Men in uniform, simple men and not American-style superheroes, equipped with emotions, feelings, and... memory. It is precisely around this last characteristic of the human being that the story of the former Israeli soldier Ari (incidentally the director of the film) takes shape, who, after listening to recent nightmares of a fellow soldier from the time of the Lebanon war, realizes he has partially lost his memories of those troubled times. A state of unrest invades Ari's mind, who then tries to recover his memory by questioning old comrades, psychologists, and other soldiers involved in that bloody mission; but the search is very arduous: his memories appear as pieces of a gigantic mosaic, furthermore covered by years and imagination. 

Through Folman's itinerary, we simultaneously experience a journey into the memories of soldiers, now permeated with dreams and terror, making them seem to come from an imaginary world, which in reality is truer and harsher than we believe.  The animated film, precisely for this reason, proves to be a brilliant technique because it allows the choice of colors, landscapes, expressions capable of masterfully representing even the emotions of the characters in the story. The timeline is enormously fragmented, just like Ari's memory; but this does not make the viewing of the film unpleasant, indeed we realize that a war is made up of dozens and dozens of episodes, each equally astounding, the order of the events loses importance, and "Waltz with Bashir" becomes almost a story formed by very different episodes but all united by a common thread that can be identified as "human misery." 

Never has a war film been so well made, and never so current, given the situation now degenerated in Gaza, thanks to the Israeli forces. The director, who I emphasize is Israeli, confronts us with a dramatic situation, that of a war won by no one: soldiers die like ants, and if they survive the bullets and terror, their mind remains gravely damaged (refusing to remember, for example...), the civilians certainly don't fare any better, and they die based on the color of their skin, religion, and location of their home.