In his paper, Waltz with Bashir (2008): Trauma and Representation in the
Animated Documentary, Joseph Kraemer uses the visceral opening scene of Waltz With Bashir as an example of how the film highlights the complex and often hazy relationship between trauma, memory and truth. Kraemer points out that the very first shot depicts the empty streets of Beirut. However, as the dogs make their way to the cowering Boaz in his apartment, the location is transformed to suburban Israel, without warning or explanation that this is the case. Of course, as we later discover, this sequence is not a real event but rather the haunting dream that Boaz has. This scene serves as a reenactment, in the mind of Boaz, of his memories of war in Lebanon, where he was tasked with the killing of many dogs in a Lebanese village. As such already there are two layers to this story – the first being the actual event in Lebanon in 1982, and the second being the resurfacing of this memory in Boaz’ dream. In the very next scene, Boaz has a conversation with Folman, the protaganist of this film, and recounts this dream to Folman. As such, a third layer is created through the act of Boaz’ retelling. Kraemer writes:

“This testimony recounts the sequence the viewer just experienced, and so yet another layer of reenactment enters into the process: that of the dreamscape and the imagination. It is as if Folman wanted to first reinforce within the viewer’s mind the genre conventions of animation—of fantasy and surreality—before forcing us to question those same assumptions with what follows.”

As such, we can see how Folman uses the medium of animation to mirror the film’s own themes of perception, recollection, and the ways in which these can be distorted. Just like how the film was made in live action and then drawn again as an animation, through continued retelling and exchange of visual narrative mediums we are forced to accept that the original events can never truly be wholly experienced and retold beyond the moment in which they were first experienced. Kraemer points out that,

“Many layers of reenactment define Ari Folman’s filmic process, revealing this interplay between the signifier (the animated image), the signified (the viewer’s mediated experience), and the referent (the historical reality).”

Therefore we, the viewer, are also intrinsically involved in this process of imperfect transmission. What we are witnessing is an animation, of a film, of a reenactment of veterans’ recollections of real events that played out on the battlefield in 1982. The experience is layered thick with human imperfection, and as such this is one of the beauties of Folman’s achievement. His film is in its essence a powerful visual metaphor of the very human experience he intended to convey.