Mistakes and The Holocaust in Waltz With Bashir
Exclusive Interview With Art Director David Polonsky
Oct 1, 2008 Dominic von Riedemann
In Part #1 of this interview, Waltz With Bashir art director David Polonsky discusses his involvement with the movie, and the process behind making it. In this section, he talks about living with mistakes and director Ari Folman's interest in the Holocaust.
One question I always ask: was there a point where you felt yourself going off-track, and how did you get back on?
“Well, it’s such a tedious process to make at least one new scene a day, it becomes an assembly line, and you lose the initial freshness and drive and you become jaded. And it’s very, very hard to snap out of that because you can’t stop, you can’t take a vacation because you have a team of people waiting for new frames each day. So some of the frames are not as good as I would have hoped.
“I don’t know: it’s more of a psychological question: how do you correct yourself? I guess time does it. I think the most important thing is trusting yourself. It comes from experience, you understand that you are going to make mistakes, you’re not going to do perfect work. Some of the work, you have to strive just to make it okay. The moment you accept that, it helps you over the hump . . . okay, let’s get it done.”
I asked that same question of Andrew Stanton, who directed WALL-E, have you seen that yet?
“Not yet, but I’m really looking forward to it.”
His motto is “make your mistakes as quickly as possible’ –
“Right. That’s very clever. I don’t have his experience . . . yes, I’ll use his advice; it’s very good!" (laughs)
You said that there’s stuff in Waltz With Bashir that you’d correct. What sort of percentage would you do over if you had the chance?
“I’d say 10%, because I am feeling this is fine the way it is, with its imperfections, the fact that it’s not slick, a lot of mistakes in some places . . . let’s just say, if I had more money, it wouldn’t necessarily make for a better film, because there is this energy of solving problems and makeshift solutions . . . this is kind of what works for the film.”
It makes you more focused.
“Yes, because the technique is new, this way of using Flash so nobody knows exactly how to do it. So, I see a lot of mistakes, but if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said ‘throw it away, do it all over.’ But today . . .”
You’re more comfortable with the mistakes.
“Yes, I’m ready to move on, this one is completed, the next one will be better.” (laughs)
There was one scene that really struck me. When the psychologist turns to Folman’s character and says, “We were the Nazis.” That’s an incredibly powerful statement; were you sitting there saying, ‘Dare we use this?’ Was there stuff that was too controversial to put into the film?
“First of all, the psychologist is not exactly saying, ‘We were the Nazis.’ That was Ari feeling that he was cast in the role of the Nazi because of his interest in the Holocaust, because his parents survived Auschwitz. But he is not comparing it, if he was comparing the Israeli Army to the Nazis, that would be stupid and incorrect.
"It is a touchy matter and it is controversial, but Ari has this in his background: this is what he feels, whether it’s about high school, about love, somehow the Holocaust pops up. This is from his parents, this is an issue that he deals with constantly."
Was there material in the interviews that you said, ‘We can’t put this in’?
“Only if it couldn’t be worked into the idea of the film. There was some really great stuff that couldn’t go into the film, mainly because it didn’t work out.”
How has the response been to Waltz With Bashir?
“In Israel? It was very, very good. Much better than we had expected, mainly because it’s animated, it skipped over the usual responses whether lefty or righty. We were expecting the accusations of Leftyism, but we were surprised when some film critics felt we weren’t taking enough responsibility for the massacres.
"For me, it was very moving to see people from different political views coming out of the film and saying ‘This is a very moving experience.’ Of course there are some people saying, ‘Why are we accusing ourselves?’ but mostly people view it as a work of art, which is good.”
David Polonsky and Ari Folman of Waltz With Bashir
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