And you thought DAS BOOT/’81 was claustrophobic. Award-winning film from Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz takes a near abstract look at war, following (in tight close-up) a single tank carrying five hardened fighters and one barely trained newbie as they cross into Southern Lebanon during the 1982 war, part of an ill-defined mission to destroy PLO bases and launching sites.* Without a specific goal, their job merely to reach a designated contact point so they can pick up orders for the next designated contact point. Between man and machine, things quickly begin to break down: misread oncoming vehicles (friend or foe?); planned and unplanned attacks; a comrade lost; banned weapons renamed so they can be ’legally’ used; a chaotic village assault where enemy Arabs use civilian women & children as ‘living’ shields, encouraging collateral (and non-collateral) damage by Israelis; that tank newbie unable to pull the trigger (literally) having previously shot at nothing more dangerous than empty barrels; all while the tank turns into a abattoir of human filth and rotting offal, their view becoming ever more restricted to a tank POV. No heroes or heroics, but with opportunistic ‘Phalangist’ warriors grabbing the prize for worst-of-the-worst. Fortunately, the mission, which opens & closes on the same ironic shot, reduced on screen to only 90 minutes of horror. But you’ll not forget a searing minute in this brilliantly shot and acted journey thru some of Dante’s darkest circles of Hell.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *For a bigger picture on the war, the remarkable animated documentary WALTZ WITH BASHIR/’08. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/waltz-with-bashir-2008.html
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