Waltz With Bashir

Look, I’m glad you all enjoyed WALL-E. Seriously; I don’t want to take that away from anyone. But somehow, WALL-E got nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards, and Waltz With Bashir did not. Waltz got a nom for Best Foreign Language Film, but honestly, it should also have been nominated for Best Animated Feature. Because—and I mean this objectively as a professional film critic—WALL-E was kind of stupid, and Waltz With Bashir is awesome. Waltz is an animated documentary by Ari Forman about his attempts to remember his role in the 1982 Lebanon war, especially in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. It’s the rare case where the form of presentation becomes an essential element in conveying the meaning of the story. The film’s ending, which would have been impossible without the tremendously inventive and artfully drawn animation that leads up to it, is a devastating example of the marriage of form and content. Waltz is both a message movie and a riveting mystery, and I can’t imagine anyone possessing a human soul or one of those new robot replacement souls who would fail to love it.