One should savour the opening shot of Samuel Maoz's film Lebanon, a shot of rather long proportions encompassing a big, blue sky and a field of sunflowers which stretch back as far as we can see. Maoz prolongs the composition to an length which is unbearable and yet is in no way so at the exact time of its happening; by the time the crux of this, his 2010 war film zeroing in on those fighting in The First Lebanon War, has arrived and we realise precisely what it is the approach to the material that Maoz is taking on, we are left begging for a shot both as colourful and as roomy as the opening one of the vast sky and aforementioned posy. No such luck, the film coming to form a brutally effective and agonising in all-the-right-ways piece forming a snapshot of warfare involving the Isreali troops marching on into Lebanon, the unique selling point here being the events are unfolded from the viewpoint of a tank crew steadily rumbling on through the decrepit and war-torn streets.
The film tells the tale of four Israeli troops, a crew simply consisting of a driver; loader, the gunner, and the tank's commander whom clashes with the rest of them over his figure of authority; the predominant spectator of whom is the gunner named Shmulik (Donat), a rookie to proceedings. Shmulik comes complete with the benefit of seeing everything first hand through the tank's scope; the film distilling Shmulik's experience of war through the audience's own, with reverse shot techniques of his exasperated gaze applied throughout. Maoz shoots Scmulik's nervous, energetic and frisky swaying around of the turret so as to garner better viewings of the surroundings through the first person perspective, it carrying with it an effective sensation of dread as we fear mass destruction of an item in relatively close proximity could very well happen at any point through the result of a slip of the hand given these controls are mastered by such an established rookie.
The life of a soldier inside a tank is as ugly and loathsome as a ground trooper; where we've all seen tanks in previous war films firing off and doing their bit, very rarely do they come across as anything more than lonely, anonymous heaps of metal seemingly invincible to all return fire as they follow through with their tasks. The notion is explored and somewhat deconstructed here, the tank very much a vulnerable item and those within it given ample attention. Those inside have the added comfort of all the protection that comes with its armour, and yet it is often the unenviable situation of being able to see the whites of the eyes of those whom you are about to engage that greets these men; much unlike a ground troop engaging in manoeuvres and whatnot, Shmulik here has the insufferable luxury of seeing the full facial features of those whom he's about to blow away. Like a solider during intense close quarters combat, mostly every assault born out of calculated orders and relatively calm histrionics for him is practically a driving of a proverbial mêlée weapon into the enemy. The film wastes no time in capturing what it is to be in Shmulik's role. When he is first called into action, his delaying costs the lives of his own men: he is beside himself; and like a temperamental golfer looking to over compensate for a previous putt which was well short, the man makes sure he does not bottle it the following time despite the fact it is not the enemy he then gazes upon by blowing everything away without thought. It is an early, harrowing scene setting the perfect tone.
The rest of the film carries that dank and unpleasant atmosphere ultimately going a long way to painting a negative and grotesque image of war. Lebanon is a grimy, grotty, greasy watch; a superb observation on the mindset of a solider distilled through a group of tank dwelling troops looking out at the world through magnified scopes. We begin on the day of the war beginning, the sixth day of June in 1982; the opening shot painting a beautiful image of where it is we are, a purer and unadulterated image of Lebanon rich in colour, sky and space; the resulting descent into mucky, filthy, scummy Hell a proverbial spoiling of the image as war tears the place apart. Maoz inserts the shot again at the very end, to not so much suggest a cleansed outcome to proceedings but instead, to suggest a disturbing and oddly circular framework to proceedings; that the ending up at precisely where it was they began goes some distance in highlighting an apparent pointlessness of war as everybody ends up where they began only with added psychological baggage and a wake of death behind them.
The film's rich imagery is backed up by its needling ability to instill angst into the audience; take an instance that sees the four crew members have to patter and amble about on the greasy, slimy floor full of muck belonging to the tank so as to find the plastic drip belonging to an enemy prisoner of war whom they've inadvertently acquired, and must calm down with morphine. Along the way is the film's stark, unrelenting palette of imagery including, but not limited to: a disturbing altercation between an Isreali solider and a neurotic Lebanese women in the street; a dying donkey appearing to 'cry' as it lays there adjacent to the road, tanks and troops rumbling on by, as well as an odd mirroring of one of the crew in a puddle of fluid, as he tosses his cigarette down into the muck so as to extinguish it. It is a remarkable piece of work, at once thrilling and unpredictable but gut wrenching and bold.
The film tells the tale of four Israeli troops, a crew simply consisting of a driver; loader, the gunner, and the tank's commander whom clashes with the rest of them over his figure of authority; the predominant spectator of whom is the gunner named Shmulik (Donat), a rookie to proceedings. Shmulik comes complete with the benefit of seeing everything first hand through the tank's scope; the film distilling Shmulik's experience of war through the audience's own, with reverse shot techniques of his exasperated gaze applied throughout. Maoz shoots Scmulik's nervous, energetic and frisky swaying around of the turret so as to garner better viewings of the surroundings through the first person perspective, it carrying with it an effective sensation of dread as we fear mass destruction of an item in relatively close proximity could very well happen at any point through the result of a slip of the hand given these controls are mastered by such an established rookie.
The life of a soldier inside a tank is as ugly and loathsome as a ground trooper; where we've all seen tanks in previous war films firing off and doing their bit, very rarely do they come across as anything more than lonely, anonymous heaps of metal seemingly invincible to all return fire as they follow through with their tasks. The notion is explored and somewhat deconstructed here, the tank very much a vulnerable item and those within it given ample attention. Those inside have the added comfort of all the protection that comes with its armour, and yet it is often the unenviable situation of being able to see the whites of the eyes of those whom you are about to engage that greets these men; much unlike a ground troop engaging in manoeuvres and whatnot, Shmulik here has the insufferable luxury of seeing the full facial features of those whom he's about to blow away. Like a solider during intense close quarters combat, mostly every assault born out of calculated orders and relatively calm histrionics for him is practically a driving of a proverbial mêlée weapon into the enemy. The film wastes no time in capturing what it is to be in Shmulik's role. When he is first called into action, his delaying costs the lives of his own men: he is beside himself; and like a temperamental golfer looking to over compensate for a previous putt which was well short, the man makes sure he does not bottle it the following time despite the fact it is not the enemy he then gazes upon by blowing everything away without thought. It is an early, harrowing scene setting the perfect tone.
The rest of the film carries that dank and unpleasant atmosphere ultimately going a long way to painting a negative and grotesque image of war. Lebanon is a grimy, grotty, greasy watch; a superb observation on the mindset of a solider distilled through a group of tank dwelling troops looking out at the world through magnified scopes. We begin on the day of the war beginning, the sixth day of June in 1982; the opening shot painting a beautiful image of where it is we are, a purer and unadulterated image of Lebanon rich in colour, sky and space; the resulting descent into mucky, filthy, scummy Hell a proverbial spoiling of the image as war tears the place apart. Maoz inserts the shot again at the very end, to not so much suggest a cleansed outcome to proceedings but instead, to suggest a disturbing and oddly circular framework to proceedings; that the ending up at precisely where it was they began goes some distance in highlighting an apparent pointlessness of war as everybody ends up where they began only with added psychological baggage and a wake of death behind them.
The film's rich imagery is backed up by its needling ability to instill angst into the audience; take an instance that sees the four crew members have to patter and amble about on the greasy, slimy floor full of muck belonging to the tank so as to find the plastic drip belonging to an enemy prisoner of war whom they've inadvertently acquired, and must calm down with morphine. Along the way is the film's stark, unrelenting palette of imagery including, but not limited to: a disturbing altercation between an Isreali solider and a neurotic Lebanese women in the street; a dying donkey appearing to 'cry' as it lays there adjacent to the road, tanks and troops rumbling on by, as well as an odd mirroring of one of the crew in a puddle of fluid, as he tosses his cigarette down into the muck so as to extinguish it. It is a remarkable piece of work, at once thrilling and unpredictable but gut wrenching and bold.