Venue: Tyneside Cinema
Screenings: Sat 20th March, 8pm @ Tyneside Cinema | Wed 24th March, 5.30pm @ Gala
Director Samuel Maoz / Germany, Israel, France, Lebanon 2009 / 93 min
Certificate 15 / In Arabic and Hebrew with English Subtitles
Winner of the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice film festival, soldier turned film maker Samuel Maoz returns to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon for this wrenching condemnation of war seen from inside an Israeli tank. A lone tank and a paratroop platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town but their simple mission turns into a nightmare and the four members of the tank crew find themselves in a violent situation that they cannot contain. Motivated by fear and the basic instinct of survival, they desperately try not to lose themselves in the chaos of war. Exploring the same battlefield as last year’s brilliant Waltz with Bashir, this tense and claustrophobic film is another compelling look at this tragic war.
Tyneside Cinema: Tickets: £7 / £6, call 0845 217 9909 or Buy Online
Gala Cinema: Tickets: £6:00 / £5.25, call 0191 332 4041 or Buy Online
Anonymous 
Lebanon Samuel Maoz (2009 Isr, Fr, Ger, Leb) Raymond Anslem, Oshri Cohen, Ashraf Barhorn
Viewed Tyneside Cinema, Northern Lights Film Festival, ticket price £7.00
What I had heard about Samuel Maoz’s (SM) film Lebanon (Leb), was that it was all shot from within a tank that took part in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). The idea held out the prospect of a statement about war, in which the tank as a setting, with the armoured isolation of its crew from the outside world, could engage with its audience as one of the forces at play in the movie. There was the prospect of a film that might explore ideas.
Leb is not so purist that it all the action takes place within the confines of the tank; and tanks have always seemed to me to be like steel coffins. But most of the action is located either within the steel hull or viewed through the cross sights of its cannon. Some war movies, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory use the theme of war to deepen thought and emotion in relation to armed conflict. Leb fails in this respect. We have an interior situation in Rhino (radio code name for the tank) which is ultimately just a pretext for individualised stories, individuation that is a standard Hollywood device for humanising ‘our side’. By featuring the crew’s subjectivities SM moves the film out of the hard death dealing carapace of Rhino softening the interior with sentimentality. Recoiling from the implicit hard implacable the idea of ‘ tank’, the film takes on the business of reconciling oppositions: the hard and the soft. Good men bring death. War as a story of sentimental enterprise.
The action, outside the tank, mostly seen through the cross hairs of the gun sight, comprises mostly of the ‘face’ of war. With its formulaic parade of burnt mangled corpses, smashed people and buildings, and mutilated bodies, Leb is just another Spielberg type war film relying for its effect on image fetishism and faux realism. In its own way a sort of pornography of simulated effect, but which is often used by film makers as a justification for their work with the claim to be bringing the “true” uncensored horror of it war to the audience. The tyranny of the action-image. As if we didn’t know that war is terrible; as if our eyes might consume these images in any different manner from which they consume an ice cream advert. Our perception of the image is guided by desire. In looking at simulated realism, we are dealing with sign language.
The other issue that interested me in relation to Leb, is that ingrained in the production of any war film is a political point of view, an ideological understanding and statement about what is happening in the conflict. How would this be expressed in Leb? Would it take the form of an outright justification of Israel’s action and position; or would Leb take a more oblique more nuanced less direct but no less propagandist line, as for instance in Ari Fisher’s Waltz with Bashir?
Ari Fisher’s film represented the Phalangist massacres of Palestinians in the Shatra and Chatilla camps as taking place over one night. It is a matter of historical UN record they took place over 2 nights, thus irrevocably implicating the IDF as complicit in the killings of thousands of innocents. One key concern of Israeli propaganda in relation to the ’82 Lebanon war is to suggest a critical gap between the acts and intentions of the IDF (representing Israeli policy), and their Christian allies, the Phalangists. In simplistic form IDF are presented as good and honourable; the Phalangists unavoidable allies, but pretty bad people. It is interesting that this is exactly the line taken by SM in Leb. The second half of the movie revolves about the captured Syrian prisoner Rhino is forced to take on board. This soldier’s presence is discovered by a couple of Phalangists who first try to take him. Failing this, one of them has a long unpleasant, one way conversation in Arabic about what he is going to do to the unfortunate man when Rhino gets to its rendez-vous point. This is vicious stuff which the Israeli crew, not speaking Arabic, don’t understand. As the shackled Syrian does not speak Hebrew , the crew’s non understanding is convenient as they are exonerated from responsibility. As director/writer SM does not permit the Syrian to use basic communication of his fear of the threats made to him and his penis by the Palangist. The viewer is left with the message: bad Phalangists, they bad men, and the Phalange are the villains the evil force in Leb. The oblique delivery of this message is of course in perfect tune with Israeli propaganda in relation to the ’82 Lebanon war: the Israelis represented the forces of moderation and fairness. Unfortunately their approach was sullied by the savagery of their unavoidable allies, the Phalange. At a propaganda level, Leb toes the Israeli line, and the film is part of a long term strategy by Israel to control the definition of its wars with its neighbours.
The opening shot of the film, a still shot held for a considerable time of the field of ripe sunflowers suggested a film that might be rich in associations, but the body of the film didn’t develop into anything beyond standard Hollywood fare. Though interestingly the last shot of the film shows the same field, but now occupied by the stranded Rhino. My mind again drifts to the association of Van Gogh and his last picture before his suicide.p
adrin neatrour
Another year, another Israeli was film. The last couple of years have seen 3 large scale war films come out of Israel, all of which deal with the first Lebanon War (Waltz With Bashir, Beaufort and now Lebanon). For a country that isn’t known for a frequent exportation of quality cinema, this is quite a statement. Are Israeli film-makers making a statement? Are they trying to find their own voice perhaps? It’s plausible to think that by making films about their country’s conflicts Israelis are making a contribution to cinema that only they can, creating their own cinematic tradition, perhaps, as opposed to trying to make Hollywood-style films without the budget or the knack. The director, Samuel Maoz, served in the army during the Lebanon war, and so it might seem logical that we should go and watch this film because, really, who else can tell us this story? It’s easy to forget, however, that almost everyone in Israel has to do national service for 3 years and has more than likely seen combat at some point, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that all 6 million Israeli citizens have what it takes to make an insightful and thought-provoking film about war, no matter how personal it may be. That would take something extra special.
The other problem is that Lebanon is, for better or worse, a war film, not too different to so many other films in that genre before it (and it really does fall within that genre), and there are only so many war films you can watch before they appear to exhaust themselves and their effectiveness in communicating the horrors of war. There’s nothing about Lebanon that gives it a distinctively Israeli slant or that might make me significantly reflect on and reassess my views on the conflict or on my role within it as an Israeli (in my case, that is). Having said that, we mustn’t assume that just because a war film has come out of Israel it needs to give us some special insight on that conflict. In fact, the more I think about it, it doesn’t seem as if the film even makes that claim. We might, then, judge it purely as a war film, and as such it must be said that it is a very well made one, albeit not without its problems. The film follows a strange structure. It appears to occupy an anti-war stance, but this point is emphasised most strongly in the first half hour of the film and then seems to be pushed aside in order to make room for a straight forward war thriller. During this first half hour we mostly see things from the point of view of the man controlling the main gun, looking through the cross-hair. There were some painfully manipulative and sentimental uses to this technique as the camera zoomed in on the faces of innocent civilian victims, as to to confront us face to face with the hard reality of war victims’ suffering. At this point I was dreading having to sit through 2 hours of very coarse anti-war statements, but I’m glad to say that this wasn’t the case in the end. The film’s refusal to build up to any sort of climax and instead make separate points at different sections of the film makes it feel a bit jarring at times, and as if the director didn’t quite know what point he was trying to make.
All in all, this was an enjoyable (if that’s the right word to describe a tense war film) viewing experience, but nothing you should worry about missing.
Review of Lebanon
Last night I went to a very advance preview of Israeli/German production LEBANON. It is the debut feature film of ex-soldier Samuel Moaz, based on his own personal experiences. Having won the Golden Lion at Venice, Lebanon has been critically acclaimed.
Lebanon is an ambitious feature from Moaz, as the film is shot entirely inside the confines of a tank. Any external shots are shot as though they are through the sight of the gunman’s turrets, complete with crosshair and accompanied by mechanical noises of the turret turning and focussing. The film follow the experiences of four men, three of whom are experienced soldiers, but one of whom is a rookie. Set in the Lebanese war, the same conflict portrayed in Waltz With Bashir, the tank joins a paratroop regiment as they embark on a mission to clear a dense area of hostile terrorists. Things begin to go wrong as the new gunman loses his nerve in battle, and it seems the regiments commander isn’t certain of the path the troop should take.
Attempting to pack an emotional punch, Moaz puts these four men in some difficult to endure situations. For the first half of the film, the team inside the tank are accompanied by the corpse of a fellow Israeli soldier that dies due to a mishap in conflict. The claustrophobic nature in which the film is shot, mixed with the dialogue and brilliant acting from the cast, ensure that you feel their stress enough to also be made uncomfortable by the corpse. The tank is also used to house a captured Syrian terrorist who damaged the tank with a rocket, and is to be taken away by Phalangists helping the troop out of a built up city, but is abandoned and left with the four men.
Particularly brilliant performances come from Michael Moshonov, who plays the driver Yigal, and Itay Tiran, who plays tank commander Assi. Their depictions of soldiers caving to the pressure of war, and the actions they are asked to take, are superb, and add such intensity to the film. The final act in the film puts the soldiers in a horribly tense situation, split from their troop and abandoned by their aides, their damaged tank and nerves must withstand an assault from unseen assailants. Moshonov and Tiran stand out in these final scenes, their madness and anger drew emotion superbly.
The only problem I had with the film was certain shot choices. In a lot of situations, characters outside the tank look directly down the sight into the eyes of gunman Shmulik, and therefore the viewer. It felt to me like a few of these shots were used to emphasise the impact of suffering that the war impacted on innocent civilians, but other times they were used to comic effect, which removed from the intended transparency of the fourth wall. This film would be easy, for someone who didn’t enjoy its concepts, to nitpick for its visual flaws, but as a statement it doesn’t hold it’s blows.
For a debut feature, Lebanon is fantastic. It is by no means a masterpiece, or the greatest war film of modern times, but it a startling and brutal portrayal of war. Very much an anti-war film, Lebanon is not quite the The Battle of Algiers, or Apocalypse Now, but certainly matches up to quality of more recent anti-war films such as aforementioned Waltz With Bashir. I hope, upon release, Lebanon is successful, but I feel there is inevitable criticism headed its way.
Lebanon
Film Review
A field of sunflowers is the opening shot for Samuel Maoz’s recent film, Lebanon. The rest of the film is spent yearning once again for that shot – waiting to be outside of the confining Israeli tank through which we experience the 1982 Lebanon War. Asi is the commander for the Rhino Unit, composed of the vulnerable Igal, the hesitant Shmulik and the more confrontational of the team, Herzel. After unintentionally ending up in a Syrian-controlled area of Lebanon, the team gradually falls apart, each member having his own emotional meltdown. Even Jamil, the always-confident lieutenant, lets his fear come through in an overheard emergency call for a rescue mission, leaving an even deeper sense of hopelessness behind.
Beyond the typical war movie that highlights tough soldiers who banter in humorous one-liners, the characters in this film are much more believable. Although at times overacted, the emotions of the soldiers draw us away from taking sides and into the real horrors of war. No matter who we side with, we anxiously await for the movie to end, not just so that we can bring these children back to their families but mostly so that we can finally get out of that prison-like tank.
Tali Padan
Review of Lebanon as seen at the Tyneside Cinema 20/3/2010
Lebanon, 2009, Samuel Maoz, Israel, 93mins
Like the Gunman in the movie, Lebanon hits and misses. It has moments in which it’s vision is clear and focused whilst suffering perhaps from the indecision and uncertainty resulting from a narrow angle of view.
The conceit of the film is that the story is set entirely in within a tank during the 1982 Lebanon war. Our view of the outside world is that of the tank’s crew: narrow and limited. It scans clumsily and mechanically around picking up information about the surroundings piecemeal. Everything outside is seen through cross hairs, constantly begging the question: to shoot or not to shoot? Constantly implying threat but inviting doubt to an already paranoid group of young and inexperienced soldiers. Exciting stuff. Yes, and that’s kind of the problem. The film veers between realism and a kind of structured movie quasi-realism which doesn’t help extract any truth from the situation. And given that the premise is the heavy matter of war – and is in fact close to the real lived experience of some – the schizophrenia of the film leaves one (or left me anyway) a bit anxious about the morality of the movie. Surely this is a situation about which we’d benefit from some truths (to the extent to which they’re possible). Is it OK to make a film about the Israeli-Lebanese conflict whose structure could be swapped for that of Apollo 13 (it’s not really that bad!) or the Poseidon Adventure? Well maybe it ought to be alright to, but it’s not half disconcerting. For example it feels a bit crass when the news arrives that the message of a young crew member’s saftey has reached his mother just as he lies dead.
But in other ways the film resists cliché. It’s nice that an arc is not forced on the story – the situation doesn’t breakdown so much as start bad and get dangerous. And for the most part the characters are not unraveled by war, they are out of their depth and incompetent as soldiers from the beginning. So I don’t think Lebanon quite fulfills it’s potential, paradoxically weighed down by the strength of it’s premise. It is however amazing to think this is the directors first feature film. The film opens with a very striking shot. A field of sunflowers in the crisp morning sun, the flowers heads are bowed – in shame? In mourning? That formal poise isn’t ever quite regained in the struggle between excitement and truth.
Mat Fleming