"Waltz With Bashir"

"Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."
- Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.

This human commandment, because of its origin, develops as thick irony in the documentary movie "Waltz With Bashir." On its way to this tragic end, the movie offers a few intense views of the ravages of war. Though about an event 20 years ago, the resemblance to today's military actions is striking - and alarming. Western armies are not Blitzing London or annihilating Hiroshima, but war is also not pilotless drones and grayed-out crosshairs over inanimate objects. Every shot fired delivers and recoils agony.

"Waltz With Bashir" effectively lays out a series of events that leave us contemplating the slim moral distinctions between killing "only" a few innocent civilians, killing a child in self defense, outright ethnic cleansing and standing by doing nothing. Allusion is also made to our modern ability to completely ignore these tragedies as we move about our lives out of sight of the blood and out of earshot of the death wails.

When I saw in a preview a few months ago that the movie was animated, that seemed odd and possibly even distracting. But in performance, the animation allows the movie to flow seamlessly between interviews, memories of events and dreams. You get the view of past action without clunky reenactments and the boundaries between memories and visions are appropriately blurred. Even better, writer-director-producer Ari Folman makes use of animation to drive home his most important point in stunning fashion.

If we are never to be a victim, perpetrator or bystander, then this movie, like the real world it portrays, leaves us very little comfortable space.