Director: Samuel Maoz
Starring: Yoav Donat, Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran, Michael Moshonov
UK Release date: 9 April 2010
Certificate: 15 (93 mins)
Apart from the controversy that surrounds any artistic attempt to grapple with the Middle East – Lebanon has already attracted both protests and awards – Samuel Maoz’s debut feature is claustrophobic, intense and brutal. Set entirely inside an Israeli tank as it fights its way through a devastated city, it avoids making broad political statements in favour of a detailed examination of the impact of war on four conscripts.
There is no attempt to justify the invasion of Lebanon: the soldiers fire on hostages, kill a child and an innocent farmer before becoming stuck in an occupied zone. Distrusting their commanding officer, observing the war through a gun’s targeting cross-hairs, desperate to go home and escape, the conscripts bicker and panic. By the time that the tank is hit by a missile, the commander has gone into shock, the driver is crying for his mother and the ethical issues of the conflict are drowned in the desperate situation they neither understand nor want.
By setting the entire film within the confines of the tank, Maoz focuses on the tensions between the four soldiers. Their commander is exposed as hesitant, relying on the authority of his position rather than any ability; the driver is frequently too terrified to act; and the gunner finds it impossible to open fire on the enemy, lingering over the brutal details of the devastated city. Maoz repeatedly emphasises the human cost of the conflict, only alluding to the complex and obscure series of alliances and anxieties that defined the conflict’s progress.
Aside from a Phalangist, who arrives in a burst of ugly savagery and conforms to every mad killer stereotype, Maoz reveals the vulnerability of every soldier. These are not warriors but conscripts: as an anti-war film, it brings home of the horror of men trapped by circumstance. By limiting the audience’s view, the film pulls the viewer into the action. When the tank is caught in a danger zone, the fear is palpable.
Without making any philosophical excursions – the only allusion to religion is the identification of the Phalangist as a ‘Christian Arab’ – or addressing complex Middle East politics, Lebanon brings home the human cost of warfare. A family become hostages; the soldiers are constantly on edge, forced to confront their mortality and morality. Every death is presented directly, piteously and as absolute. When a dead soldier is called an angel, it is not a sudden burst of sentimentality. It is simply military euphemism.
While it could be possible to read the film as an allegory about the invasion of Lebanon, the cinematography, slow, detailed and elegant, implies that Maoz is more concerned to interpret war as a human tragedy. The soldiers may question why they are fighting, but not in any pacifist sense. They simply want to go home. Moving, at times overpowering and constantly engaging, Lebanon is uncomfortable viewing: thrilling without glamourising war and a subtle plea for understanding and peace.
Gareth Vile
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