In the cinema’s long fascination with chronicling war, one would think we as viewers have seen just about all there is to see. Apparently not, as the Israeli film “Lebanon” deftly handles the challenge of telling its entire story from the innards of a loud, careening metal tank. It is a grisly experience, and one of the greatest war films I have ever seen.
“Lebanon” takes place on the first day of the 1982 Lebanon War. The bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian opposition has led to an invasion of southern Lebanon, which had become a stronghold for Palestinian fighters.
Rolling north is an Israeli tank, charged with accompanying infantry platoons as they move through villages decimated by the Israeli Air Force. “Lebanon” shares a clear lineage to the classic war film “Das Boot,” which took place inside a German submarine.
But the tank is a different kind of mechanical beast. It is hot, cramped and it stinks. Controlling its movements are four young men — a driver, a gunner, a loader and their commander. All are ill- trained to handle the seething power beneath their feet, and they know it. “Till now I’ve shot only barrels,” says the gunman.
“Lebanon” is an exhilarating exercise in sensory filmmaking. The tank compartment is filthy. The metal floorboards pool with a mix of water, cigarette butts and bullet casings. The control panel oozes oil and grease like leaky pores. With orders to stay inside the tank, the men urinate into a metal box. And when the tank moves, its machinery shrieks with metallic cries.
If the tank’s interior feels grim, the views outside, seen through the gunner’s periscope, reveal a different kind of hell.
The crew’s first encounter sets the mood. The gunner’s hesitation to fire at an oncoming car costs the life of an Israeli infantryman (whose body is subsequently dropped into the tank’s cockpit). The gunner gets a chance at redeeming himself when an unmarked truck comes barrelling toward the platoon. He fires, but when the smoke clears, the gravel road is covered in obliterated chicken cages and a dying farmer, mutilated by shrapnel.
As the film moves on, so does the periscope’s gaze. In a bombed-out town, we see a young boy, his face caked with ash. The tank’s turret swivels again to reveal a motionless donkey, tears forming around its eyes. Craning again, we see a Lebanese woman whose child and husband have been killed. Her apartment has been torn asunder, and she has been left naked in the struggle, gathering up clothes in the rubble as if the rags contained her humanity. When the woman turns to look into the periscope’s eye, it’s heartbreaking.
“Lebanon” is the first full-length film by Samuel Maoz, a former Israeli tank gunner. It announces the arrival of a visionary director. By setting the entire movie inside the tank, Maoz immerses us in grim details, but also confronts viewers on issues of perspective and accountability.
The film has been deemed controversial by both sides of the Israeli-Arab political spectrum. Maybe because Maoz has made a war movie that is decidedly antiwar. It is highly critical of the Israeli war machine, but also concerned with the psychological ruin of the young soldiers asked to carry out such violence.
“Lebanon” opens with a tranquil shot of a vast field of sunflowers, their dark bulbs and yellow petals draped downward as an open blue sky looms overhead. It is a calming, idyllic image of a landscape fresh and alive. Harmony before the cataclysm.
“lebanon”
R for disturbing bloody war violence, language including sexual references and some nudity. 1 hour, 34 minutes. Starring Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Ashraf Barhom; directed by Samuel Maoz. Opens today at Chez Artiste.
