8/14/2019 Dr Shlomo Abrahmov - Dancing Alone with Bashir
2008
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Israeli Paratrooper Sinai Campaign 1956 by
Avraham Vered image copyrights IDF archives
and Israel ministry of Defense
Adi Nes from Soldiers 2000
.Such transformation was achieved earlier by Adi Nes with his
Soldiers series. This shift
grasps the IDF soldier not as the fearless untouchable hero as
could be observed in
Avarahm Vered paratrooper in Sinai 1956, but rather as a
vulnerable and at times
confused individual. A soldier whose participation in combat
activities is accidental and
unexplained, as was very successfully portrayed by Ari Folman in
Waltz with Bashir. Its
conceptual foundation is the need by many young Israeli men to
find an explanation, an
identitythat matches the national or collective aspects with
those aspects of an individual
within contemporary Western society. A society that its focus is
the enlargement of the self
combined with the diminishing of the collective or national
identification.
Wars are notoriously difficult to portray and convey with any
degree of accuracy and
objectivity or by any means that would help the spectator share
the ordeal of its
combatants. In this fashion Ari Folman's film achieves a
remarkable accomplishment
when his animated surreal depictions of battle scenes and
experiences, seems as valid,
and in a fashion, even more convincing than any other visual
accounts of this war of
choice. Could this be regarded in the future as the accurate
account of the war, one that
grasps its essence? Or as an example when art out-scopes other
more traditional modes
of narration? Whatever it is, we must acknowledge and
appreciate, especially here in
Israel, this unique historical achievement in Israeli
movie-making.
