Ah, Toronto. I only come once a year, and then I spend more time in dark rooms than roaming the city, but the very word ‘Toronto’ inspires anticipation and delight. For a film critic, it means a festival lasting ten days in early September, and that means movies--30, 40, even 50 of ‘em, depending on your stamina. I’ve been going six years now, and some of my favorite films of the decade are ones I saw here first: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days; You, the Living; Still Life/Dong; Be with Me; Tropical Malady; and Shara.
Waltz with Bashir won’t crack that list, but it’s close. It’s an animated documentary--an unusual combination--done in a style that recalls a cross between Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and certain graphic novels. Writer and director Ari Folman attempts to reconstruct what happened during the infamous 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. Folman was an Israeli soldier when Israel invaded Lebanon. Three months into the invasion, the Lebanese Phalangist party entered the Palestinian refugee camps and slaughtered hundreds of refugees. Whether the Israeli army was complicit in the killings has always been disputed. Israeli soldiers were surrounding the camps, but it’s unclear how much they realized of what was going on, though later an Israeli government commission found General (later Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon “personally responsible.â€
