Fighter

Fighter shapes up as one of the great documentaries of this year, or any other.

In juxtaposing two extraordinary personal histories, it ponders in a refreshingly original way unanswerable questions about memory, imagination, history and that elusive thing we call truth.

Far from the solemn earnestness of most Holocaust documentaries, Fighter addresses the war and its oft-toxic reverberations with refreshing impudence and candor.

Bar-Lev has created a film remarkable in its ability to capture both the worst and best of human nature.

Director Amir Bar-Lev finds a way to mix the personal, the philosophical and the historical into a complex human document, something that's funny, moving and sad.

In the end, Fighter, despite its newsreel footage, is less a document of wartime experience than of the mentality one needs to maintain in order to be a fighter.

The film does offer a good deal of engaging dark humor.