Less and Less These Days

It feels like it's been a very long time since I've had a film truly creep under my skin and haunt me. Back in high school, it was about every third film that I watched, I'd be thinking about it for days afterward. Now, I'm lucky if it happens once or twice a year. Yesterday, I watched such a film.

Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) is one of the most interesting and haunting films I've watched in a long while. The style Ari Folman has given with the animation and documentary aesthetics works on so many levels. The images are stunning and burn into your retnas, the ghosts of this film flickering through your head the instant the film credits roll.

I know it is nothing short of a cop-out, but this is really a film that simply needs to be seen. It will probably have a different effect on each person. For me, it reminded me of how lucky I've been to grow up where I have, sheltered from so many horrors in life that I rarely think about and others have had to deal with on a daily basis for years. And it made me realize what my father might have experienced during his army days--and why he rarely speaks of such times.

See this film if you have any interest in animation. See this film if you enjoy something more substantial than explosions. See this film if you're like me--sheltered from so much. Maybe it will peel off a few layers of the tough skin you've grown around your heart.