Using various forms of animation and film manipulation, director Ari Folman tells an adult tale of his experiences in the Israeli army, and investigates the concept of repression.
Gary Thompson: Amid summer's slow dance, brainwise, try to'Waltz with Bashir'
SINCE THERE'S no shortage of frivolous entertainment in theaters now, adventurous viewers might want to take a shot at "Waltz With Bashir," a more cerebral DVD available this week.
The Oscar-nominated Israeli movie, a fixture on last year's Top 10 lists, is an animated, wildly off-beat mind-blower from director Ari Folman about his experiences in the Israeli army circa 1982.
Much of the head-trippy film concerns his hazy/repressed memories of what he saw when Israeli soldiers failed to intervene as Christian Phalangist militias attacked and killed residents of a Palestinian refugee camp.
Folman uses rotoscoped archival footage and animated images to explore ideas of repression - how shame mixed with imagination might combine to distort what we think of as memory, individual or collective.
The DVD is $29, and comes with a Q&A with Folman, commentary by him and a "making-of" documentary. *
