So, last night I went in to see one of the most striking impressive and dark movies of the year if not all time. Waltz with Bashir.

What brought me into the film was the visuals. The style of animation reminded me of Scanner Darkly at first but not long into it that dropped with the film having its own unique style. What I left with was the content of the film. Truely disturbing.

The film is a first being a fully animated documentary, the topic matter is the 1982 conflict between the Isralis and the Palestines with one event in particular. The writer director and producer of the film is approached by a friend whos been having a dream about what he did in this conflict, this spurs on the main researchers will to rebuild his own lost memories of the event and what part he played. He finds other people involved and gets their stories from them, using them to help piece together the full story. What we see of the time period is the animated versions of the stories that come from those interviewed. This works amazingly well. When someone says "I drove a tank" we see a younger version of that person driving a tank, simple concept overall.

Those inverviewed include others who served in the armed forces at the time and an ex war correspondant. They all give full and frank accounts of what they saw and heard and when the full story is told in its horrific level of detail it really shows. To help remind us that the events shown are all real archive footage is added at the end.

By all means this film isn't easy viewing, essentially documenting a massacre during war time. Having said that this film is more than well worth a watch at least once (though you'll probably not want to watch it more than once) and if it doesn't manage to get some form of award for its style or the strength and depth of its story. Being subtitled and not in English some people will avoid it which is a shame really.

The certification is well justified, being an 18 it contains an animated porn scene lots of shooting death gore and then theres the archive shots at the end.

My only recommendation is to see the film and understand what it's all about.