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Film Analysis : Waltz With Bashir

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Presented in an engaging and intensely graphic visual style, Waltz with Bashir uses the medium of fluid animation to present layers of history and effectively communicate concepts surrounding how we deal with trauma. Often referencing traumatic events that which current society did not encounter directly themselves, Waltz with Bashir triumphs in the struggle against ethical and visual implications of animated form, evoking a strong emotional response in its visual style. A vector based, frame by frame animation technique was used to present a re-enactment of the events that took place; referencing live-action footage as visual reference for the stand-alone animation process. The opening scene of the film sets up the dramatic visual style; as the camera tracks along, rabid dogs run loose on the streets of Beirut. Initially just one dog running towards the camera, eyes wide and vicious, swiftly multiplies into a pack of dogs, snarling and drooling; tearing through the highly stylised war-torn streets. This dramatized, surrealist scene we later find is actually a visual interpretation of a nightmare that Folman’s friend Boaz has connected to his experiences from the war in Lebanon. Typically a convention used in narrative film, Folman’s process removes us from the reality in the film because of its surrealist animated form and we become lost in the spectacle of animation. This allows the feature’s concepts to be depicted in a more objective way; albeit the subjective nature of

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