We haven’t had a chance to spit out a proper review of Ari Folman’s frank animated film, “Waltz With Bashir,” about the 1982 Beirut massacre, but it is playing at the New York Film Festival which starts proper for the public this Friday. So hopefully we’ll have a chance to spit out a review before we take off for vacation this week, but until then we can say the film is candid, powerful, but not entirely mirthless film about a little-discussed atrocity from the war with Lebanon and the brutal staying-power of guilt.
It sounds like it’s heavy and it is to an extent, but like we said, it’s not joyless either and has some interesting, very human responses to the horrors of war. The film also has some pretty great tunes in it too. The sonorous original music in the film is composed by minimalist electronic musician Max Richter, and features songs by OMD (“Enola Gay”), P.I.L. (“This Is Not A Love Song”), Navadei Haucaf (“Good Morning Lebanon” which is written for the movie), The Click (“Inkubator”) and Zeev Tene‘s remake of the Cake song “Korea,” retitled, “Beiruth.”
The theatrical trailer for Waltz With Bashir which documents the filmmaker’s journey toward discovering the truth about an Israeli Army mission he participated in during the first Lebanon War of the early 1980s that left him with a loss of memory about the events. The long-forgotten images begin to resurface as the director interviews old friends and comrades around the world.
“Waltz with Bashir” comes out in limited release starting on December 26th.