Featuring the voices of Ari Folman and Ron Ben-Yishai. In Hebrew with English subtitles. Rated R. Opens Friday, December 26, at the Ridge Theatre

Lebanon was Israel's Vietnam. Of questionable legality, morality, and cost-effectiveness, the 1982 Israel Defense Forces invasion of this, the most fragile of Levantine republics, ultimately ended in failure, a circumstance that scalded right-wing zealots as severely as it did left-wing critics. Consequently, it is a national wound that remains unhealed.

In Waltz With Bashir, a rare animated documentary, the war in Lebanon is depicted almost exclusively as an unresolved nightmare. From the brilliant opening shot of feral dogs sniffing blood in the nocturnal streets of Tel Aviv, to the final image of Israeli soldiers guarding the gates of Sabra and Shatila while the Christian Maronite militia does its horrific work inside, what we see is war as insomnia, guilt, and irrepressible knowledge. The survivors may have gone home, but their minds remain where the bodies of friends and foes alike are buried.

Not only is the vast majority of the stories in this film literally true, most of the voice-over “actors” are the actual bearers of the psychological scars that we see onscreen. To his great credit, writer-director Ari Forman has pitched this stroll down bloodstained memory lane in the only key that really matters: PTSD.

That said, Waltz With Bashir is an animated feature that fairly explodes—if you'll pardon the choice of verb—with dazzling imagery. From a surreal sexual fantasy on a boat to a bleakly comic riff on the sort of chain reaction that invariably results in “collateral damage”, this brilliant Israeli-French-German coproduction takes us places we've never been before.