Movie: Lebanon
Starring: Reymond Amselom and Oshri Cohen
Writer/Director: Samuel Maoz
Duration: 93 minutes
2.5 stars out of 4
One of Hitchcock’s golden rules was once you (the camera) are in the vehicle, you remain in the vehicle. That’s the concept to Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, a noble cinematic achievement that many perceive as the redolent The Hurt Locker. In various ways it is: it has no villains, no heroes and doesn’t explain the events that surround its plot.
Except in Lebanon, our sense of space is alienated and our fear is compacted.
Lebanon seems deadly real with its unconventional take on the First Lebanese War in 1982. It rarely cloys and delivers genuine shocks. Some will become fascinated by Lebanon, but also frustrated at the same time. Despite its close-ups and impressionistic shots of water, sweat and flowers, the film can be unexpectedly arid and its message, or mere energy, is as oblique as its detached narrative.
The establishing shot is a field of daffodils. They sit uncomfortably still in a windless morning. After boldly inserting a reference that puts peace in a portraiture, the film pulls the rug out from under us and becomes very squalid.
We follow four tankers: the driver, the gunner, the loader, and the commander. Along the way, they nestle close to a Syrian POW, who is cuffed to a bar and whimpers with deep consternation. There is never a sense of focus for Maoz. Are we to scrutinize the psychological turmoil within these soldiers, the purpose of war, the rush and ultimate hesitation when under fire or the mere claustrophobia of being trapped in a piece of metal?
Lebanon is shot throughout the breadth of the tank or through the focal lens of a gunsight, which moves to a whirling-traversing gun turret. There is never a chance to breathe fresh air. The soldiers claim the air is dank, it’s muggy and the space is confined.
We penetrate the pathological states of the characters through vivid close-ups of eyes. Cigarettes are seen floating in puddles of dank water and we get the idea that the characters are degenerated by the enclosed space that ultimately debilitates their sanity.
But is this a character study? Far from it.
Much of the film is shot through that narrow gunsight. It captures images that almost seem forced at times—zoom-ins on lamenting donkeys, staring civilians—imagery that seems more set on establishing emotion than tension.
However, the images are witnessed by the gunman. He is an overly sympathetic and fragile soldier, who has never really experienced that chilling sensation of killing a man.
Being caught in a enclosed location, the tank, is a genius and extremely barren premise. There is only so much a director can do to tantalize the viewer in a mere shell of a location (yet Wolfgang Petersen pulled it off in the 149-minute Das Boot). With Lebanon, however, we get the claustrophobia quick, the feeling of urgency, the developing animosity between the constrained characters, and the chaotic world that is moving in on them.
Is it transcendent at times? You bet. Especially when one of the soldiers, anxiously retells a story of the day he lost his father. There is also a riveting slow-motion shot of a bazooka being fired directly at the camera, in other words, the tank. What the tank sees, we see. When the film’s ideas become obscured, our patience withers. What is Maoz actually getting at?
Lebanon is daring at times, yet shockingly vague and disappointing with its predictable conclusion (Maoz emphasizes irony over point or the lack thereof). Perhaps the conclusion is buzz-killed by Maoz’s hopes to rekindle a symbol: that peace comes in large places and fear lingers within the small—the tank.
But other than that, Lebanon is a recount that never exactly counts. It won the Leone D’or at the Venice Film Festival and has already become controversial amongst some groups. I’m surprised. The film is beautiful to look at and be shaken by, but never to be influenced by. That was The Hurt Locker’s job.
I can it that I am in the minority here. But the film’s fascination, according to the majority of critics, is found in the claustrophobia. But wasn’t that accomplished and perfected in the U-Boat of Das Boot and the bunker of Downfall?
I will note: it’s not the revolutionary message I demand. It’s that sense that the film’s exposition has been transcended and fulfilled, beyond what it simply sets up—the claustrophobia. And to understand that the entrapment these characters feel are purposefully defined beyond the mere canon of Maoz’s style.
Lebanon premiers at The Screening Room on Nov 12.
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