Waltzing with a machine gun...

I've just come back from a movie.

Probably the most important move I've ever seen (or will see) my whole life.

Memory is something we're told to cherish and hold close to our hearts and to never let go of the memories.
Memories are who we are.

I've just come back from watching a movie.
It's an animated feature.
The genre is slippery; it could be a documentary, a biopic or even just your run of the mill (anti)war movie.
But it's not just any of those things.
It's a movie about what we don't want to deal with.

Waltz with Bashir is a movie about how we remember and don't remember and why.
Knowing the details of Sabra and Shatila, the Phalangists and Israel's own complicity in what happened doesn't prepare you for this fragmented tale of memory and the remembering of memories... not forgotten... just... gone away.

Not coherent I know.

I'm still speechless and weepy.
Remembering my own images of war - which were removed from me by cameras and screens and radio coms - the animation helps to keep the gory details away, just like memory filters away those terrible images and you remember them... but without the impact that will have you shaking and sobbing and vomiting.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to write something that will make sense.
Maybe not.

If it's in a cinema near you... go see it.
Go.
Just... go.