For the new column by SiciliAmbiente Film Festival today we propose: “Waltz with Bashir” suggested by Maurilio Mangano, Casting Director (U.I.C.D.)
“The emotional impact caused by Waltz with Bashir certainly depends on the unsettling, crudely dreamlike and realistic graphics, rock music, and hallucinatory atmospheres that make it a trip into the wounds of war.
But there is also an element that in my opinion makes it a unique film. The point of view of the lead actor, the Israeli director Ari Folman himself. Folman had served in the Israeli army in 1982, participating in the war in Lebanon, and had witnessed the slaughter of the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. And this is the strength of Folman’s investigation in the film, both an adult and a nineteen-year-old soldier who tries to self-analyze in a psychedelic way (the bloody nightmares, the dance, the waltz amidst machine gun shots), the reasons for so much horror.
But the ruthless analysis does not find a reason for the brutality of war, and the wounds that seem healed by time and memory actually hide under the scabs, the wounds of the souls of veterans, who cannot find peace.
A visionary, powerful film that turns the troubled sleep of veterans into a personal and collective documentary (heartbreaking images of reality at the end) of something that cannot be forgotten.
Directed by Ari Folman, animated by Yoni Goodman and set to music by Max Richter, the film premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.”