From the Queue: Waltz with Bashir

Title: Waltz with Bashir
Director: Ari Folman
Original Release: 2008
My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

This weekend's Family Movie Night movie is one I'll be using for the next Mock Squid Soup gathering so I'll hold off on that review for now.  My Wife and I did watch another film on our own: Waltz with Bashir, an animated work from Israel.  The film is a quasi-documentary based on the director's experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War.  Or rather, it's based on his efforts to piece together his own memories of the war.  He visits comrades and other war veterans to help fill in the gaps.

The story is brutal.  As one might expect, the horrors Folman had forgotten are considerable.  I probably would have done my best to block them out, too.  The artwork is highly inventive - it looks like rotoscoping but is actually a combination of Adobe Flash cutouts and good old fashioned cel animation.  Folman claims Joe Sacco and Otto Dix as influences and I sense Frank Miller, too.  The film was adapted into a graphic novel. 

I was impressed by the film but I wouldn't watch it again.  Too heavy.