(Ari Folman, above, as the on-screen version of himself, in Waltz With Bashir.)Our Waltz With Bashir Interview with the Oscar-nominated director, on the occasion of the film's release on DVD.
by Terry Keefe
“So, Terry, what is it you want to ask me?” queried Israeli film director Ari Folman, and there was exhaustion in his voice. It was on the Friday before Oscar Weekend, back in February, that I met Folman and he was understandably weary after having logged long hours on the vigorous awards campaign trail for his film Waltz With Bashir, regarded by many for months prior as the front-runner for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. When we had our talk, the ballots had long since been cast, but Folman still hadn’t tired of speaking about Bashir, physically worn out though he likely was. The Oscar ended up going to the Japanese entry, Departures, but although Bashir didn't make history by becoming the first Israeli film to win that particular award, it had already become a landmark creation, the influence of which will be felt for decades to come. As the first feature-length animated documentary to gain a relatively wide audience, Bashir also dazzled audiences with its unique blend of a harrowing real-life war story, the backdrop of which many western audiences were unfamiliar with, or had forgotten; a personal journey-style documentary; and searing animated imagery. For the still-uninitiated, the story of the film is that of Folman himself, as he attempts to retrieve forgotten and/or repressed memories from his days as a soldier for the Israeli Army during the first Lebanon War in the beginning of the 80s.
The DVD for Bashir features a standout Director’s Commentary, which is both entertaining, and highly educational from a filmmaking perspective, going into great detail about how various sequences were created, all peppered with Folman's somewhat self-deprecating style of humor (the Commentary begins with this quote, “My name is Ari Folman, and I’m kind of responsible for the film you’re about to see...”) Also of particular note is a special features section entitled “Animatics,” which breaks down a number of the key sequences of Bashir and shows how they were created by Folman’s animation studio, “Bridgit Folman Film Gang,” from the live-action guide images to the layers of animation which followed. The “Animatics” section is a must-watch for animation fanatics, and, particularly, for students of animation.
You’ve sort of started a new genre, that of the animated feature documentary, with Waltz with Bashir.
Ari Folman: Well, it is a new genre! It never was a feature film. You had "Ryan" (the 2004 animated documentary short by Chris Landreth about the Canadian animator Ryan Larkin), which was the short - and [now] the first feature-length film. But I don’t know if there’ll be a flood of animated documentaries, because it’s so expensive.
Yeah, and difficult.
And difficult. It takes so long to do. But you never know.
As a filmmaker on this type of project, it has got to be daunting, because even once you get the first part of production completed, you’re nowhere close to being done.
Not even done with half of the first part. You haven’t even started. It’s very frustrating, you know. The transformation from real action to animation for a director is incredible. It’s like, you know, for example, you have the shot of a couple of guys, like us, one of them is the interviewer, and the other is smoking a joint - [laughs] So you come to the studio, and it’s like, Sunday, the joint is here [indicates position] - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…weekend, Monday, Tuesday - and then, after two weeks you see they had somewhere a mistake, and it goes like this [make inhaling noise and the “joint” switches position abruptly] You know? And you have to start all over again. This is frustration. And two weeks are lost, just lost.
Did you have any technique for keeping yourself motivated during the long process?
Yeah, well, I consider myself a pretty cool guy. I was not like…once you realize there’s nothing you can do to control the pace of things, you relax. It’s…you just have to try to raise more money, this is it.
Do you have a favorite of the type of animations that you used? And least favorite?
I never got used to 3D animation. I like some of the Pixar films - the ones that have better scripts - but out of taste, I prefer 2D. It’s better. And even now, I see the original Peter Pan, it was done in the ‘50s, but it’s better than most Pixar films I see. It’s more gentle and it’s more beautiful. Not so violent.
I feel the same way. I wonder though if it’s because 2D animation was what I grew up on, and I prefer it for nostalgic reasons.
Yeah, yeah, but I try it on my kids now, and I give them a lot of 2D, and the classic "Looney Tunes" and everything, and they love it. They love it.
Something that struck me watching Waltz with Bashir was that animation is a perfect tool to do a war film with, because it allows for the easy incorporation of the hallucinatory elements of war.
Yeah, and you know, war is such a surreal thing, it’s the most surreal thing on earth, and animation can do it. Surrealism is perfect for animation.
(The rabid dogs at the beginning of Waltz With Bashir, above.)
There was also something uniquely striking about the use of pop songs in the film. I think it’s that 60s era rock and pop songs have been used in so many Viet Nam films that they’ve become a cliché. But the events in Waltz with Bashir we’ve only seen really in the U.S. as part of news footage with no stylization, and when you add Johnny Rotten singing over those events, this creates a time capsule of that moment and place which hasn’t existed in film before.
It is the beginning of the ‘80s, and that’s what he sang, right? [laughs]
Obviously, the making of the film was a therapeutic process for you, in terms of reclaiming memories. Did any new memories pop up after the production period, which you weren’t able to include in the film?
Yeah, during traveling for the film, I discovered more things that are not in it. I wish they were in the film. You know, for example, I read this article on one flight, in which this American soldier is telling how he comes back from Iraq, and I realized it took him six days, to get from the front, to somewhere in Oklahoma. And then I thought, “How long did it take us?” And then I realized that from the middle of battle in Beirut, to back home to Haifa in helicopter…it took us twenty minutes! Just think where you are, and after twenty minutes, you are in the middle of town, and all those beautiful girls [laughs]. It’s shocking, twenty minutes of transformation. It’s crazy. And I didn’t think about it while I was making the film, so that isn’t in the film. I wish it was.
Animation also seems to be a perfect medium for stories that are about revealing hidden memories, as memories can be so elusive, and, once again, surreal.
Yeah, definitely. It’s so flexible, memory. I totally agree. And animation, you know, with Persepolis and Bashir, hopefully, in the very near future, we’ll have more animation for adults, which I think is great.
Is there anything you want Americans, in particular, to take away from the film? (Special thanks to Saskia Smith for this question)
Just to let you know that wars, they have no glory, no glamour. Don’t believe Platoon and Oliver Stone films. And wars have no bravery and brotherhood of man. It’s totally bullshit. It’s all a useless idea. It’s a cliché. It’s like a Bob Dylan song. It’s like “Masters of War,” you know? Remember that song? It’s nothing more than that. It’s like, those people with big egos, behind desks, sending other people, very young people, to die for the cause of nothing - this is what war is, there’s nothing more to it. So I tried to put that in my film.
The film has recently been adapted to graphic novel form.
The first edition is sold out! The American work…they released it in eight countries as a graphic novel. But the work they did here is, by far, it has, it’s like, on a different scale -
Better?
It’s way better. It’s not just better, it’s a great graphic novel.
What was your involvement?
I had to cut all the text, and dub it. Had to arrange it, you know, as a graphic novel. It was exciting, and because I was mostly interested by graphic novels with this film, not by animation, I loved the process…and they did a great…it’s a beautiful piece of art, really what they did.
Do you know what you’re working on next?
Yeah, I am adapting a Stanislaw Lem novel - it’s called The Futurological Congress - of course, we call it only The Congress, and it’s about the world of an actress, she’s in decline because the studios just sampled her and they kept using her image, and she walks into the future, which is a world that is totally controlled by the manufacture of psychiatric pharmacology products. And the book is very crazy, and the film’s gonna be…less crazy. But very wild.
The Waltz with Bashir DVD can be ordered via Amazon.
FIN.
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