Recreating Defined Reality: Animated Documentary

Documentary film, motion picture that shapes and interprets factual material for purposes of education or entertainment.

-Britannica

I always assumed documentaries to be a form which does not include acting and something that was not recreated. But after getting to know this genre of film ,and moreover to be introduced to it by the movie Waltz with Bashir, I have come to realize that this word “documentary” contains more than what meets the eye.

Animated Documentary is a form of documentary where everything is recreated and as the name suggests scenes are animated. This is a form of fact where everything is recreated from the scratch; the world, the people, the places etc. These movies in no shape or form are related to the documentaries about animations.

There are many animated documentaries out there but I chose to get introduced to it by Waltz with Bashir. This movie in itself is very special. Not only is it animated and a documentary, this movie also contains scenes from the director’s dreams. This makes this movie lie on the thin line between real facts and fiction. As if this was not enough, in this movie the director is set out to find out his own truth and the truth about what happened with him in the Lebanon war through conversing with other people who were there with him that time. This makes for a very unsteady reality. This movie is based on different experiences of the people who served at the war. And obviously people remember things differently. Individual truths usually tend to differ from the actual truth as very evidently shown in the Akira Kurosawa film “Rashomon“. But it is still a documentary. It still shows the incidents that took place though they were shown from a recollection of memories.

So, why go for animated documentaries when it’s controversial? Well, the most important thing to that animation provides is the footage that could no be filmed during the actual event. It helps recreating the missing visuals and sound. Earlier it was used just as a b-roll but films like Waltz with Bashir have proved the power this medium contains. As along with power comes great responsibility, it maintains a good balance in showing gore in a milder but effective way which is better for the younger audience. Documentary is always assumed to be boring and no fun. Animated documentaries also serves as a good way for feeding information to the people as it makes the documentary more visually appealing.