Not entirely sure what to say of this but seeing as it’s holding back other reviews I’ll just blast through and get it out of the way, lol. In short, I liked it. I’m not as wowed as others by the fact that animation can successfully cover a subject as bleak as war, because I’ve never been one to see animation and say, “oh it’s a cartoon, it must be for kids”. And of course, Richard Linklater made great use of this type of rotoscoping technique in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. But it’s clearly a story worth telling, and that they keep it down around the 90 minute mark without compromising any of its impact is very laudable. There are images and scenes here of the horror and chaos of war that instantly rank it up there with the best of them (for me, for the record, that would be Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War, etc.).

I was initially surprised, then, that it wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature last week at the Oscar nominations, but I kind of understand that too. Casting aside any comment on whether rotoscoping really counts as animation, as technically it is kinda just “tracing”, it seems clear that Wall•E will triumph over anything else in this category and it would’ve just seemed wrong on the night for a robot love story to steal the gold from something heavier like this. And I must admit, I kind of am in the camp that looks at rotoscoping – even when it’s “adapted” here for more fantastical sequences – as something less impressive than fully hand-drawn or even the best of CG animation. This isn’t to look down on Waltz with Bashir as a whole – “true” animation or no, it is the perfect medium to tell this story and when the film switches to real footage at the end, it has all the more impact for the contrast it has with the hollow distance we have from what precedes it. Much of the film is about this distance, this, “how did you cope?” factor to the soldier’s story and the point at which is becomes “real”. It’s a haunting movie, certainly. Whether it’s so new anymore to point out that “war is hell” … I’ll just lay off that personal chain of thought for fear of offending anyone too much …

Tags: animation, war

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