Waltz With Bashir (ואלס עם באשיר)

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

What Is It?

The 2008 Israeli adult animated war documentary drama movie Waltz With Bashir (ואלס עם באשיר | Vals Im Bashir).

Waltz With Bashir | Official Trailer (2008)

Ari Folman presents his film “Waltz with Bashir,”

Waltz with Bashir – Exclusive: Director Ari Folman Interview

What Is It About?

This is how Metacritic describes this animated movie:

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director, Ari, about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs.

Every night, the same number of beasts.

The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties.

Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore, about that period of his life.

Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world.

He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself.

As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images.

[Sony Classics]

Starring:Ari Folman, Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag

Director: Ari Folman
Genre(s): Biography, Drama, War, Animation
Rating: R
Runtime: 90 min

Rating: R (Dist. Images of Atrocities|Brief Nudity|Graphic Sexual Violence|Strong Violence)

Genre: Documentary, Animation

Original Language: Hebrew

Director: Ari Folman

Producer: Ari Folman, Serge Lalou, Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul

Writer: Ari Folman

Release Date (Theaters): Dec 25, 2008 Limited

Release Date (Streaming): Apr 16, 2012

Box Office (Gross USA): $2.3M

Runtime: 1h 30m

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Production Co: Télévision Suisse-Romande (TSR), Arte France, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF), Razor Film Produktion GmbH, SBS, Les Films d’ici, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Israel Film Fund

Here is how Wikipedia describes this animated movie:

Waltz with Bashir (Hebrew: ואלס עם באשיר, translit. Vals Im Bashir) is a 2008 Israeli adult animated war docudrama film written, produced, and directed by Ari Folman.

It depicts Folman’s search for lost memories of his experience as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War.[4]

The film premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or.

Subsequently, it received wide acclaim from critics and audiences alike, with particular praise given to its themes, animation, direction, story, Max Richter’s score and editing, and grossed over $11 million at the global box office.

It won numerous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[5] the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, the César Award for Best Foreign Film, and the International Documentary Association Award for Best Feature Documentary, and was nominated for many more, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[6] the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.

Bashir and the stop-motion $9.99, both released in 2008, were the first Israeli feature-length animated films released theatrically since Joseph the Dreamer in 1962.

The United States Has To Pay Lebanon Reparations For Blindness?

Source: Wikimedia Commons

I had more dreams but I only recorded part of my last dream that took place during the day, and part of the dream possibly took place in the past when I went to a fictional college in maybe a fictional version of the city of LC but I am not sure.

There was a route that I would often take when walking through the college campus that was to the left of a quiet street, there were several college buildings along this route with offices at the front of the buildings, and I would sometimes go inside one of the last buildings.

Most of the time I would walk under a bridge and make a left turn through some courtyards with smaller college buildings with offices at the front of them, and this area would often have bicycles laying on the ground (maybe because there were no bicycle racks, but I am not sure).

During the dream I traveled through this route several times in maybe the past, and then the dream went to the present when I was no longer attending the college and I went back to the college to show my mom and my former male classmate DH and maybe my brother GC around the college while telling them about various memories.

We took my usual route, things were the same and bicycles were still in the courtyards, and there were college students walking around.

I am not sure if we walked or drove, but the next thing that I remember is us going to a store that reminded me of a poorly lit under-stocked version of the Big Lots in the city of LC combined with a bare-bones budget medical clinic / hospital that is sometimes in my dreams.

The store was barely stocked and most of the store was dark with some dim light in the front like they only wanted you shopping in the front or something, and the only employee was a woman with light-color skin with yellow hair who was the cashier who looked like she probably also worked at a medical clinic or hospital and the cash register was oddly placed on the right side of the building.

At some point when we were at the cash register the cashier and me were talking when she told me that she worked at a medical clinic and / or hospital as well, and she told me that I should consider volunteering there.

Then she told me that I seemed to be friendly and personable, and she suggested that I consider taking part in the medical clinic’s or hospital’s annual telethon (fundraiser) because she felt that I might be a good fit for that based on my personality.

I thanked her for the suggestions and compliments, I started to explain that I do not think that I could handle something like that because of anxiety and shyness et cetera, but that maybe I could do something in the background at the telethon and / or volunteer sometimes.

There was a pause, I was actually getting nervous, and our conversation was holding up the line so I probably said goodbye and we left.

We drove to a shopping mall and when we got inside the mall we went to separate (maybe my mom and my brother GC went one way and me and my former classmate DH went another way) without picking a meet-up location, and I did not realize this until it was too late.

As me and DH walked I kept thinking about what the cashier had said about volunteering and / or doing the telethon, I was thinking so hard that I had a daydream and / or the dream jumped to my thoughts, and I was rehearsing for the telethon with one or more people.

After rehearsing I stopped to listen to an audio recording from a previous telethon, and it sounded like John Rosenstern was talking to another man during the telethon.

The Mr. Rosenstern-sounding man was telling the other man about how The United States government had to pay $5 per something that I can not remember, which amounted to $100-something a year per person, for anyone in Lebanon who was blind as a result of something that The United States had done and / or had some responsibility for in the past; and so I guess this was reparations.

I had never heard of this before so this was interesting and I was curious about this, and I wondered how much a year did The United States government pay in total and I was curious about the story behind all of this but I woke up.

The end,

-John Jr