Entertainment

MIDEAST MEMORY

HAUNTING is the best word for “Waltz With Bashir,” a striking ani mated documentary – not an oxy moron, despite how it sounds – from Israel.

In a sort of real-life variation on “The Manchurian Candidate,” an animated version of director Ari Folman is told by a former army buddy that he’s been having nightmares about being chased by dogs.

It’s a reference to an event they witnessed back in the ’80s, massacres at two Palestinian refugee camps committed by Christian Phalangist militia. Their Israeli unit failed to stop the violence.

Folman has wiped the event from his memory, so he travels talking to former soldiers. He collects their memories and the dreams that have haunted them for two decades.

One recalls the party atmosphere on a transport boat, and describes a bizarre dream – exquisitely rendered in the

film – where a beautiful giantess

carries him off into the sea.

The title comes from a journalist’s description of a soldier shooting at everything in sight – in a waltz-like motion – on a Beirut street festooned with posters of Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s assassinated president-elect.

The soldier himself recalls gunning down a teenage boy after the youngster fired a grenade at his unit.

The actual massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps is handled in an appropriately subdued manner – and even this version probably would have been nearly impossible to watch in a live-action movie.

The eerily beautiful animation resembles the rotoscoping technique used in Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly,” but it’s actually a sophisticated blend of hand-drawn, computer and flash animation.

“Waltz With Bashir” once again demonstrates that animation is not a genre but an increasingly artistic way to tell all kinds of stories.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR

One of the year’s best.

In Hebrew with English subtitles. Running time: 87 minutes. Rated R (disturbing images and atrocities, brief nudity and sex). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Sunshine.