In order to answer the question of whether Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir can be considered a documentary, it might behoove us to first ask: is it accurate to not call it a documentary?
Wikipedia's definition of a documentary is a "nonfiction motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record." Nowhere in this (very generalized) description do we see the words "animated" or "live-action." Waltz with Bashir seems to otherwise check all of the boxes of what a documentary sets out to accomplish. Indeed, the film is firmly grounded in reality, and simply conveys its ideas and characters through animated frames rather than film stock.
Cinematically, documentaries have no set framework (as many narrative structures do), and constantly evolve and change with culture and global events. For instance, a serial television documentary on Earth's ecosystems will employ very different techniques than a documentary based on the American Civil War. An Inconvenient Truth will look and sound nothing like Koyaanisqatsi. Some documentaries will be rich with nonstop dialogue, while others, like Leviathan, contain no words at all. The very goal of the genre allows for loose and ever-fluctuating stylistic choices.
All this to say that Waltz with Bashir can and should be considered a documentary, albeit one in rare form. As far as its style goes, animation only serves to highlight and intensify much of Folman's vision. The film is told in retrospect - through a series of flashbacks and half-forgotten memories of several men who fought in the Israel Defense Force in the 1980s. While a conventional, live-action documentary might use B-roll or extensive archival footage of the actual events, Waltz with Bashir uses animation to put the viewer inside the heads of the veterans. Use of colorful motifs and surreal, dreamlike images allows the audience to connect with these memories on an emotional level rather than on a factual surface level.
While I do agree that the animation of the film does not affect it's genre placement and that cinematically documentaries do not have a set framework, I believe the answer to your question "is it accurate to not call it a documentary?" is yes. While the genre does indeed allow for a variety of stylistic choices, I argue that the film is not a documentary because of the way it is presented. While the film tells the real story of a war, the way that story is told is in a narrative format. It follows Ari as he talks to his friends trying to recall his memories from the war, but it gives no indication that these "interviews" are recreations of actual conversations. In short, there are too many things that seem "fictionalized" for it to be considered a documentary.
ReplyDelete"Documentaries have no set framework," but then again, neither do films. You can choose to follow the rules of Dogme 95 collective or not so I'm not sure what you're getting at there.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to suggest that the film isn't factually true but emotionally true. I think you have that right but that makes the film great art, not great documentary. The Mona Lisa is not an attempt to document a Renaissance woman, although a Renaissance woman sat for the painting. The painter had something else in mind, didn't he? What you have to pin down is where is the line, the dividing line at which a film leaves realm of documentary and ventures into propaganda or fiction? If that line isn't tied to the presentation of facts, I'm not sure what else it would be connected.