(That said, MAN ON WIRE is by far the superior film, and as much as I love Herzog he should have won a few years ago for the sadly ignored GRIZZLY MAN; as good as ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD is that one's a modern classic.)

Revanche is so masterful, and yet so removed than most films of such kind that you might actually feel helpless. You would want to seek some sort of emotional catharsis, and the film doesn’t intend to supply you any in any sort of easy way. The film, one feels, has earned it all through exacting devotion to its story, and intends that its audience not fall prey to any easy sentiments, but instead earn it too by continued devotion to contemplating the various lives on record here.

Much acclaim has been laid over Mr. Reygadas film Silent Light, and it supposed deep spiritual undertones, and I have always suggested how pretentious and dull that film is. This one’s the deal, straight out. Revanche is spiritual without once mentioning God, without once raising obvious questions, and without once stating its themes explicitly. It seems to have lived life, and its pace suggests that. The conundrums in which the characters and we find ourselves in aren’t one for an easy description. We’re always aware of all the equations, and in that way we’re forced to observe with no hint of bias towards any character. I use the word equation very carefully, because the film earns that little word as a virtue. Look how it stages its scenes where its characters are not alone in the frames, but almost always in pairs in a film almost exclusively given to two-shots. This is remarkable filmmaking we’re talking about here, and when the whole story is laid bare before us, all we, as jury members, can do is ponder endlessly. You might not feel much for any character, but you sure to understand them. The former, I believe, most films manage, the latter, some films, but ones which accomplish the latter without the leverage of the former are rare. Understand the depth of the motivation behind their actions, for not one of them is uni-dimensional.

As for Waltz with Bashir, I am underwhelmed. It has huge structural flaws.

Waltz with Bashir is being described as a documentary of some sort, and if Mr. Folman intended it that way I guess he made a bloody mess out of it. The goof up sticks out like a sore thumb within the first ten minutes, with the staging of a conversation at a bar and a conversation at a shrink friend’s place at 0630 feeling highly awkward. You see, these scenes with their quiet emotions are intended to be real and natural, but if we describe the film as a documentary, than all this is being staged and that kind of drains the emotion out of it. As if we’re watching a role-play, where the artifice can never draw our feelings. That is why I wish to concede it to Mr. Folman by citing it isn’t a documentary per se but an autobiography employing the style of one. We see interviews with soldiers, and we see conversations with friends, and it is quite apparent that what Mr. Folman intends to narrate is the making of the documentary rather than the documentary itself.

There’s a deeper flaw that the film just doesn’t recover from. That’s the choice of the medium, as in choosing animation as the form of expression, which feels gimmicky for the most part. I kept debating with myself during the entire length over this choice, with the film’s imagery and mise-en-scene providing fodder for the argument. I sought to convince myself that it indeed was the right choice but I just couldn’t find am argument worthy enough. Right after the film I rushed to find the reason from Mr. Folman himself and this is what he says, which is more or less what he has to say considering I have poured over three separate interviews –
Actually, there was no other way. We had to do it in animation, or not do it at all. I had some experience with animation in my previous show, which was a documentary called The Material that Love Is Made of, a five hour documentary, which was basically about love… So I was having ideas about making this film [Waltz with Bashir] and I wanted to explore what I did in the previous documentary. From the very beginning, when I imagined the characters, I imagined them drawn, and animated.
Source: GreenCine – Ari Folman: “Animation, or Not at all.

As I suspected, no reason at all. It is more of a gimmick than the actual utilization of the potential of a medium, and the advantages it offers. You know, like a fancy idea. Now, I believe the basic principle of animation, or cartoons for that matter, is irony. Satire, for which cartoons are so often used, works on the principle of irony. Drawing the apparent power of an image isn’t necessarily animation’s premier forte. For that we have photography, as in live images, because real images have much more gravity to them then cartoons. Animation is sought to draw caricatures, and hence manipulate the inherent meaning of an image. Of course, the animated form is spectacular when it comes to painting other worldly images, like the Grave of the Fireflies, which draws its magic from its medium of choice. Persepolis, the film to which Waltz with Bashir is being likened to, worked on that very principle. That is, not stating the apparent.

The actual content, the human story, is pretty much rhetorical and often feels artificial. I’m not sure the film has any political statements to make, other than to state the politically correct. But of course, the script and its structure is simply unconvincing. What the film intends to do is to use the excavation of repressed memories to learn the truth behind a horrible historical event, so that learning it and piecing it together, bit by bit will present the complete picture as a revelation. A personal memoir leading to an historical truth. And the problem is it feels like a strategy, a clever ploy, rather than an honest introspection. Every soldier spoken to seems to be exactly at the desired vantage point to further the story, and unlike most successful documentaries which successfully conceal their artifice with a good script, this one doesn’t.

This is a very mediocre film that stands out because of choice of the medium. Nothing else.