Waltz with Bashir Critic Reviews

Waltz With Bashir not only breathes but it howls - and sobs and curses and croons and, in the end, when sound proves useless in the face of calamity, falls into awful silence.Read the full review

Folman is an Israeli documentarian who has not worked in animation. Now he uses it as the best way to reconstruct memories, fantasies, hallucinations, possibilities, past and present. This film would be nearly impossible to make any other way.Read the full review

Waltz With Bashir has transcended the definitions of ''cartoon'' or ''war documentary'' to be classified as its own brilliant invention.Read the full review

Provocative, hallucinatory, incendiary, this devastating animated documentary is unlike any Israeli film you've seen. More than that, in its seamless mixing of the real and the surreal, the personal and the political, animation and live action, it's unlike any film you've seen, period.Read the full review

Get ready to be knocked for a loop.Read the full review

The best movie of 2008? The most revealing war film ever made? The greatest animated feature to come out of Israel? All these descriptions could apply to Waltz With Bashir.Read the full review

The chosen style of animation leads to a distracting choppiness that renders the movements, gestures and facial expressions of the interviewees unconvincing. The other problem is that, memory naturally being something that returns in fits and starts, the film is rarely able to sustain any consistent narrative thrust.Read the full review

A memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film.Read the full review

The trouble with Bashir’s extraordinary technique is that it lacks the confrontational realism of live footage; the extreme stylization of the animation can be distancing, making it hard to relate the images to real events and people. But that’s also part of Folman’s point.Read the full review