New Article: Kraemer, Waltz with Bashir: Trauma and Representation in the Animated Documentary

Kraemer, Joseph A. “Waltz with Bashir (2008): Trauma and Representation in the Animated Documentary.” Journal of Film and Video 67.3-4 (2015): 57-68.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_film_and_video/v067/67.3-4.kraemer.html

 

Excerpt

Waltz with Bashir, in its final minutes, seems to fall within this trap of showing the modern condition of the world at its worst, the trauma of human suffering, as something that can be contained and distilled down to the most dramatic, visceral document of the massacre possible—the archival video clip—which somehow can satisfactorily sum up the truth of that calamity. In this way, the film betrays the momentum toward a truly authentic representation of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, where the film was headed before its final, non-animated sequence. Folman’s assertion that his remembrance and rediscovered ability to know and take possession of the traumatic event would set him free from the amnesia he suffered, to say nothing of the trauma of those families left behind to mourn their dead, seems inaccurate and misguided.