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Reviews
Transcendence (2014)
Wasted...
movie with great actors and nice SFX, which unfortunately sacrifices a really interesting ethical treatise on the creative spirit of the human mind and the associated risks for superficial kindergarten action. In a row, anxious, unbelievable characters are ready to sometimes sacrifice, sometimes spare, and then sacrifice again any number of people for their own volatile do-gooder convictions and loyalties with an annoying missionary fervor.
The Gatekeepers (2012)
Unsettling true...
A documentary that really impressed me, through it's subject and it's awesome formal simplicity.
Listening to all these ex-Directors, who didn't hesitate to use literally every possible means during their active years, reconsidering now the effects of a violent intelligence apparatus on civil society, all that intercut with (real?) surveillance footage of observations, assassinations etc., can really give you the creeps. Does that sound unfamiliar? Hello, War on Terror. Hello, Homeland.
"The Gatekeepers" ' breathtaking credibility is achieved with natural ease, it simply highlights reality in it's tragic ambiguity, in contrast to haunting works of fiction dramatizing the conflicts of the region, like "The Hurt Locker", "The Kingdom", "Body of Lies", "Syriana" and others. These are great movies, no easy food, all on the intelligent side of the spectrum - but they're just "stories".
This one is about things and people you only tend to hear about in the news. And the film, decently edited, leaves the necessary space for ambivalence: neither side is let off the hook in this work - neither Israeli politicians, Israeli agents, Israeli settlers, nor the PLO, nor Hamas, nor everybody else, nor violence, nor self-defense. You see the main characters talking about successful missions with an impish smile, likable rascals most of them. Until you go "Wait a moment", remembering that their job was mostly about killing people - mostly bad people, well
but people. And by and by you see every single one of them pondering the pointlessness of a strategy that relies on suppression, because this strategy damages and harms your own people, it's youth, it's minds. Maybe more than you can ever hurt the others.
This movie comes as kind of a helpless legacy of the contemporary intellgentsia of one of Israel's leading intelligence agencies. Premier Netanjahu reportedly refused to watch this movie - which says something about him (and his policy?). But nothing about this documentary.