You can't watch Waltz With Bashir without thinking that it's the movie Waking Life should have been.

Where the video rotoscoping of Waking Life came across as too literal, Waltz with Bashir runs away with the reality ball, transcribing the words and experiences of actual interview subjects into a dreamy splash of animation. It wallows in eyecandy, like the casual destruction of a tank rolling through the streets of Beirut, or the eerie light of flares falling against a bombed-out seafront.

There's a universal aspect to the cartoon face that makes it easy to identify with. But then there's a specificity to photographs that make them compelling documents. Waltz with Bashir combines the cartoon medium with real-life source material to straddle the attributes of both. We see a soldier brush patchouli onto his uniform with the quirky flourish of an actual mannerism, but his face is rendered in the simple mask of a comic book everyman.

Despite the shoestring animation budget, close attention to effects and lighting makes this one of the most visually striking films in years. Most of the animation is done with flash, but only once does it convey a distinctly Aqua Teen Hunger Force vibe. It's during an explicit representation of pornography that one can only presume was the reason for Ron Jeremy getting a "thanks to" in the credits.

The second necessary comparison is to Joe Sacco's masterpiece of comic book journalism Palestine. Sacco used the comic book format to portray the Palestinians in a distinctly sympathetic and intimate manner. Here we see the same techniques used on the Israeli Defense Force (with hardly a Palestinian in sight).

The movie pieces together memories and anecdotes from the 1982 Lebanon War, a particularly ugly series of urban skirmishes. Movies about the quirks and the horrors of war are familiar territory, but Waltz with Bashir isn't exactly a Lebanese conflict version of M*A*S*H. As the dream sequences and weird stories pile up (mostly funny, sometimes horrific), the movie circles around the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

The filmmaker supposedly served in the army during this atrocity, and the movie follows his efforts to recollect those memories. This selective amnesia is almost certainly a narrative conceit, one that gives the narrator a wishy-washy air of duplicity.

The biggest shortcoming of Waltz with Bashir, is that the brazen manipulation of reality leaves the viewer to wonder what is a fabrication and what is a factual re-enactment. Historical veracity is particularly important in this instance, not just because the massacre itself was so serious, but because the complicity of the Israeli Defense Force is a subject that will probably always be obscured in the mire of Middle East politics and antisemitism.

Waltz with Bashir seems like a brave, yet failed, attempt to wash away that mire. The whole movie has the air of a politician's apology. There's a look of sorrow, but no admission of guilt.

As a historical document, Waltz with Bashir is questionable. As a work of experimental animation and surrealism, it's a fun and powerful ride.