4/4  A powerful part of history we're not familiar with
A brilliant and moving film, Walts with Bashir follows one man as he tries to remember his role as a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War. This leads him to several conversations with his fellow soldiers, each one offering disturbing, sometime... (read full)

4/4  Excellent movie in all respects
This movie was excellent! The animation and style was interesting and innovative. The storytelling was brilliant and captivating. The artistic direction and some of the shots they used were breathtaking. Great panoramic shots, panning land... (read full)

4/5 Waltz with Bashir
  by Stephen Slater (Vancouver Canada)

This film (Waltz With Bashir)transcends the war film genre and although animated has greater impact and sense of reality then live action films like Saving Private Ryan.Anyone watching Waltz with Bashir will be haunted by the film just as film maker was by the massacre.
Now I would love to see a big budget film of Sabra/Shatilla from a Palestinian viewpoint but till then this film is the definitive film about Sabra/Shatilla and is a must see.

5/5 A powerful movie
  by A. McCoy (Minneapolis)
I was hesitant going into this movie because I'm not a big fan of this style of animation and I did not know if it would work to tell a gripping story. I was wrong. The images and the wonderful music and the powerful and interesting story structure came together perfectly to tell a moving story. I'm still not a fan of this style of animation, but the folks seem to know exactly how to use it for their story.

In response to some negative reviews, I did not finish watching the movie and get the impression that all Israeli soldiers are inept heartless soldiers. If that were the case, then the movie wouldn't have been done since there would be no need to suppress memories which would be mundane. Reading the reviews did, however, provide me with more information on the conflict and the horrible casualties.

3/5 an animation about the 1983 Iraeli invasion of Lebanon
  by R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
A former Israeli solder is having bad dreams about dogs he killed
during the war. He goes to his friend a film maker and finds
that he too has trouble remembering that time of war.
The result is this animated history of his search for memories.
What he blotted out is one of the modern horror stories
of men killing innocents in Palestinian refugee camps.
This movie makes me very sad.

1/5 Terrible film
  by Jon Stevens (Los Angeles)
I hated this movie as I do most Israeli films. Why? Unlike most nations who glorify their heroes, Israeli filmmakers love to put Israel down. This film makes the Israeli soldiers idiots lacking any sense of patriotism. They cry and moan about the Sabra Shatila massacre by the Christians but forget that the Palestinians provoked it by raping, murdering, and maiming thousands of Christians, 10,000 in the city of Demur alone! Israeli films tend to make Israelis evil and Palestinians heroes. They ignore the heroism of Israeli valiant IDF, and in the film Beaufort for example they portray them as whiners and cowards. Waltzing With Bashir makes it seem that Israeli soldiers wantonly kill civilians. Not true. Israeli army soldiers serve with honor. I've been one. No other army in the world has ever tried to protect the enemy civilian population as the IDF has, yet these Israeli, self-righteous leftist filmmakers make these ugly negative films about Israel and its people and IDF, when Israelis are a heroic nation that managed to make the desert bloom, built a modern nation surrounded by blood thirty enemies determined to kill its entire Jewish and Christian poulation . These filmmakers ignore and forget the sacrifice of the 22,000 young Israeli soldiers who've sacrificed their lives for the State of Israel to be a haven for the persecuted Jewish people, and other persecuted people, i.e., Israel took in Vietnamese Boat People when no one wanted them, and many African refugees. I'm ashamed of films like this one, the disgusting Lemon Tree, Syrian Bride, Paradise Now that glorified suicide bombers, Beaufort, James Journey To Jerusalem, all horrible disgraces. I don't see the Palestinians making films that apologize for murdering and maiming of Israeli civilians, and Christians civilians in Lebanon. They make films glorifying themselves as victimized and heroic. Israelis should learn. The Arabs may not fight as well as the Israelis on the battlefield, but they cunningly are winning the PR war helped by Isareli and American Jewish foolish traitor apologists.

1/5 Waltz With Bashir ; Jewish Self - Flagellation
  by Frederick A. Remington (Del Mar)

WALTZ WITH BASHIR got one thing right. When it comes to compulsive self criticism, Jews and Israel can't be beat.

If I had just dropped in from Mars with little knowledge of world history, and my first history lesson was WALTZ WITH BASHIR, I'd assume that Israel was an immoral miscreant for trying to defend itself against a particular ideology that delights in killing Jews. For example, on March 11, 1978, the PLO crossed from Lebanon into Israel, hijacked two buses, and murdered 37 people in cold blood, mostly kids. During the course of Arafat's adventures in Lebanon, the PLO murdered thousands of Christians, conducted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and according to the U.N., violated 270 documented cease fire agreements. These little facts, including any reference to terrorists, Fatah, the PLO, or endemic Jew-hatred in the Middle East were conspicuously absent from the movie.

Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon suffered approximately 200,000 civilian fatalities in a series of running conflicts involving Muslims vs. Christians, Syrians vs. Christians, the PLO vs. both Jews and Christians and the U.S. Marines getting hammered in Beirut. The number of civilians killed by the IDF was a small fraction of this number. One major point that the movie failed to point out is that the government of Lebanon INVITED the Israelis into Lebanon to help them get rid of the PLO, which the IDF eventually succeeded in doing. Part of the deal was to allow Arafat and his thugs to escape to Tunisia where Arafat could spend his days dreaming of dead Jews and basking in the glow of his European and Arab sycophants. Then, in 1993, under the Oslo Accords, Jewish guilt plus temporary insanity caused Israel to invite Arafat and the PLO back to the West Bank. Big Mistake! Let's not forget that when Israel REALLY occupied the West Bank, and not just 1.7% as it does today, Israel built Palestinian Universities, roads, hospitals and the life expectancy of West Bank Palestinians went from 44 to 67 years of age!

The movie gives the impression that Beirut was utterly destroyed by the IDF. In fact, Beirut was largely in ruins due to Christian Phalange attacks against Palestinian positions well before the IDF arrived. It is true that the IDF shelled and bombed buildings and allegedly killed several thousand civilians in an effort to destroy the PLO and related Palestinian terrorists. This really got Europe and the U.N. upset because they believe that Jews should not be allowed to defend themselves unless they can absolutely guarantee that there will be no collateral damage. Of course, the movie completely ignored the factors that compelled Israel to enter Lebanon in the first place. History reveals that Europe and the U.N. were complacent, not only when the PLO terrorized Israel, but both Europe and the U.N. failed to mount any meaningful protest after the PLO murdered, raped and tortured the Christian residents of Damur. Just as irritating is the fact that Europeans, who are in no position to criticize Jews, are probably unaware that Palestinian Muslims have been killing Palestinian Jews long before Israeli statehood in 1948. Does Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood ring a bell? Probably not.

The final scene in the movie shows the massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. These camps, in fact they are cities, became headquarters for the PLO. NOTE: WHY ARE THERE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMPS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Some 800,000 Jews were driven out of Arab countries between 1948 and 1950, and most of them were successfully integrated into Israeli society. Why haven't Muslims accepted the Palestinians as equal citizens in any of their numerous nations? In any case, the IDF agreed to let the Christian militias go into the camps and drive out the PLO. The militias went crazy and took revenge on the Palestinians for murdering their families. During the siege of the camps, some members of the IDF suspected that Palestinian civilians were being killed, but they didn't do enough to stop it. In fact, the only recourse for the IDF would have been to go into the camps and start killing their Christian allies. In the end, after all the suffering caused by the PLO, the only thing that the world remembers is the Israeli connection to Sabra and Chatila.

Also, the movie makes the IDF out to be the most inept, corrupt, perverted fighting force in existence. One wonders how the IDF managed to win all its wars while receiving absolutely no American military aid during two of its most difficult defensive wars - Israel's War of Independence and the 1967, Six Day War?
Fred Remington
Del Mar
October, 2009Waltz With Bashir