Animation vs Actual Footage - The Contrast in "Waltz with Bashir"

This week in our class, we watched the film "Waltz with Bashir." This was a very interesting film to watch for many reasons. The form of animation is unique and fresh. The story was very interesting and the animation allowed it to be told in a certain way. The film presented very disturbing situations that occured during the Israeli-Lebanon War of 1982. The massacre of Palestinian refuges by the Christian Phalangists was very disturbing, although this is the intended reaction I'm sure. One important aspect of the final minutes of the film is that there is a switch from animation to actual footage of the aftermath of the murders, when Palestinian women are walking around the area of Beirut that held the refuge camps and they are crying and wailing. I think this was a brilliant choice on the part of the filmmakers because it forces the viewer to recognize that these were actual events, not just a cartoon. With animation it is all too easy to convince oneself that one is simply watching a movie, but to see footage of the actual event, or in this case, the direct aftermath, prevents the viewer from walking away without having an emotional reaction of some sort.

For me personally, the reaction was one of shock and dismay. One of the characters in the film talks about walking through the camps right after the massacre stopped and seeing a little curly haired girl in the rubble; only her head and a hand visible. This reminds him of his own little girl. The dead child is shown animated and then when you see live action the little girl is shown. I was saddened when they had this scene in animation but seeing the real little girl, knowing this actually happened to a child, is absolutely horrifying. The viewer cannot escape from it because it is real. While there is always a level of distaste when showing corpses on film, I feel it is an important way to reach people emotionally and force them to acknowledge the horrors of violence. For this reason I feel the filmmakers made the right choice when they decided to end the film with footage of what had happened.