Waltz with Bashir

TO THE accompaniment of an adrenalin-pumping percussive soundtrack, more than two dozen vicious, barking dogs rampage through the streets of a city. Rarely, if ever, has an animated movie or a documentary opened with a sequence as arresting as this startling scene devised by Ari Folman for his unusual animated documentary Waltz With Bashir.

That opening is, it transpires, a recurring nightmare for a friend of Folman, and they trace it back to their experiences as naive young Israeli soldiers during the 1982 invasion of south Lebanon. Realising how little he remembers about that period in his life, Folman makes a film as a form of therapy to confront his blocked memories.

The movie's title refers to the movement of a soldier firing off a machine gun while standing under portraits of Bashir Gemayel, whose short-lived reign as president of Lebanon ended when he was killed in 1982. Later that day, Israeli troops surrounded west Beirut refugee camps populated by Palestinian refugees. Phalangist Christian militia entered the camps and over three days massacred 3,000 people, mostly women, children and the elderly.

Folman's film began in the form of a video shoot comprising interviews with nine former army colleagues to find the truth behind his and their experiences. That became the basis for a storyboard and over 2,000 illustrations that would be animated.

Animated in bold strokes, Waltz With Bashirfeatures scene after scene of haunting imagery: tanks barging through narrow streets, regardless of the damage caused; troops emerging naked from the sea to enter Beirut by night; soldiers zigzagging as they try to dodge the bullets that claimed many of their lives.

Ironically, it's when Folman finally reverts to archival filmed footage taken after the massacres that he reveals the movie's most disturbing images.

****

Directed by Ari Folman 16 cert, Cineworld/IFI/Light House, Dublin, 87 min