Waltz with Bashir and Meditations on War

This chapter considers Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir within the broader context of non-animated and animated war films, such as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Mori Masaki's Barefoot Gen, Jimmy Murakami's When the Wind Blows, and Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies. It looks briefly at five other Israel films that deal with the subject of Lebanon: Eli Cohen's Ricochets, Haim Bouzaglo's Cherry Season, Eran Rikli's Cup Final, Joseph Cedar's Beaufort, and Samuel Maoz's Lebanon. It examines how the Israel films use more conventional modes of narrative fiction filmmaking rather than animation or documentary. The chapter looks at the intertexts that allow Waltz with Bashir to be both specific and general as it reflects upon the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. It provides indirect views on other episodes of the twentieth century, such as events in Vietnam, Hiroshima, Korea, and the Holocaust.