The difference between a conventional narrative and a documentary is not the story, but how the story is told. Waltz with Bashir could have very easily been a narrative-driven film about a soldier fighting his PTSD to seek truth in what he experienced when he was 19. To me, it seems disrespectful to consider this as simply a narrative, when the strengths lie in the unadulterated intimacy between Bashir, his memories, and the people he encounters.
A documentary is meant to explore and record different perspectives in order to maintain an idea or historical record. That's a pretty clinical definition, but Folman does just that. It incorporates an investigative journalism premise, while creating drama and tension as, piece by piece, and puts together his memories and experiences and presents it. As he moves through the people he remembers from the siege in Beirut, there is an air of subjectivity between all of the people he interviews and the haziness of this memories. We know from the beginning sequence of the dogs, who terrorize the streets much like the soldiers did, that we are entering an certain hostile place in his mind. And with that, it only builds. Biege Luciano-Adams put it well in this article from 2009 when he says "Knowledge is subjective, but is also shared." That makes his memories, and his quest to regain them back evermore stronger. He finds that his thoughts and his memories are malleable and ever changing, which makes it so much more important that he spends the time recounting, recording, and portraying them.
As an answer to the second question, the director has so much more power with animation. They have complete and utter control over lighting, composition, and color. There is control over how the characters move within the setting. The sequence in which the soldiers rise out of the sea, naked except for dog-tags and machine guns, is repeated over and over. Matched with the same thematic music, it creates an almost poetic and romantic depiction of war and soldiers, like a rebirth or cleansing, when the situation could not be more opposite. Perhaps Folman wanted to be cleansed of his guilt and suffering from the war, and that is how he repeatedly represents that. Animation protects his integrity and the integrity of his memories. It's so much easier to accept the horrors of what he went through when it is presented in a way that seems artificial, is aesthetically pleasing, and as a director, to know what is coming. Animation protects him.
You raise a lot of interesting points. I'm intrigued by the idea that animation somehow adds to the integrity of the director. But when we're talking about a documentary, it's the integrity of the film that matters. Hence my question: is it right to characterize a film that takes memories and has an artist render them in animated form a documentary? If I took Bill Clinton's autobiography and animated it with crude pencil drawings do we have a documentary on our hands?
ReplyDeleteWhat I particularly liked about your analysis is how you got down to the nitty gritty of the definition of a documentary. However, I feel you, despite your conclusion, that that definition does not point towards the film being a documentary. "A documentary is meant to explore and record different perspectives in order to maintain an idea or historical record". What is crucial, and what you skip over, is the different perspectives. Folman's movie focuses almost solely on his perspective. The animation goes so far as to show the events inside his own head, as opposed to a variety of perspectives. Perhaps I am being too fastidious, either way I really enjoyed the analysis.
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