ALERT: There are spoilers in this review.

After more than twenty years, Ari Folman has no memory of his participation in the 1982 Lebanon War. When a friend tells him of his recurring dream of twenty-six wild, angry dogs running down the street and waiting outside his apartment, it triggers dreams about Folman's own participation in the war, specifically the massacre by Lebanese Christian Phalangists of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Waltz with Bashir is Folman's search for the meaning of his dreams and for his memory of that time. It is a documentary, but it is almost completely done with animation. One of the reasons for using animation is that it allows a certain surreal quality to the dream sequences. It also shows war as a surreal experience, whether it is living on the beach as if on vacation, then going into West Beirut searching for terrorists, or the sequence that gives the film its title in which a soldier "dances" around the middle of a square while firing his weapon in all directions with posters of Lebanon's President Bashir Gamayel looking on.

Folman calls a psychiatrist friend who tells him that memory is a strange thing. The onset of his dream is his mind's way of pushing him to remember. "Memory takes us where we need to go," he tells Folman. He also explains how memory often fills in the holes with things that didn't really happen.

Folman goes on to interview others who went into the war with him. Each sheds a bit more light on what really happened. Some, like Folman, have very limited memories of those days. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder often blocks the memory of that which is too terrible to remember. There is a sense of detective-story in the telling. Folman knows he was in the war, but remembers nothing of it, except for the surreal dream in which he comes out of the sea naked, puts on his uniform and sees streams of women passing him by.

He finally gets enough information to remember that he was in Beirut during the time of the massacre. Israeli soldiers did not take part, except in unwitting, unintentional ways, but the complicity of the Israeli government is clearly alluded to. As the film shows the massacre going on, the word begins to move up the chain of command. As the reports of soldiers nearby are passed on, the question is asked, "Did you see it yourself?" which is always answered no. But even though the higher ranks may not have wanted to know about it, the common soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces were witness to the mass killing of civilians.

Folman's psychiatrist friend makes a connection between the massacre in Lebanon and the larger massacre of the Holocaust. The film goes so far as to use the word genocide. This is no minor point. It is recognition that to a far lesser extent, some of the same things that happened in the Holocaust are also happening to Palestinians. Even if the Israeli government did not know what would happen when the Phalangists entered the camps, the Israeli soldiers were witnessing a crime to which they did not respond. The film ends with a powerful collection of archival footage that represents how Folman's memory has returned and how terrible that memory is.

In an interview, Folman gives his thoughts on war in general: "Having made Waltz with Bashir from the point of view of a common soldier, I've come to one conclusion: war is so useless that it is unbelievable. It's like nothing you've seen in American movies. No glam, no glory. Just very young men going nowhere, shooting at no one they know, getting shot at by no one they know, then going home and trying to forget. Sometimes they can. Most the time they cannot." In reflecting on making the film he also says, "Maybe I am doing all this for my sons. When they grow up and watch the film, maybe it will help them make the right decisions, meaning not to take part in any war, whatsoever."

Waltz with Bashir does carry a strong anti-war message, but it does not do so at the cost of the soldiers who fight in wars. Rather it is an example of how those who fight in wars are often spiritually and psychologically injured by the experience itself. For Folman, that injury can only begin to find healing when he confronts the memory that has been hidden for so long.