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By Dempsey
#13156968
After "Waltz With Bashir," a new film about "soft, panic-stricken IDF soldiers"

"This must qualify as one of the most anti-heroic war movies ever made; not a single character can stomach battle or shows the slightest courage towards his comrades, making mockery of a plaque that extols: "Man is steel. A tank is only iron."

American Jews will boycott it for sure, no chance in Hollywood. "Lebanon" has its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Tuesday.


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/fil ... 9881.story


Film Reviews
Lebanon -- Film Review
By Deborah Young, September 08, 2009 01:22 ET
Bottom Line: A wrenching condemnation of war seen from inside an Israeli tank.
Venice Film Festival, Competition


Image

VENICE -- The emotional traumas of young Israeli soldiers drafted into the war with Lebanon in the 1980s are recounted through the eyes of a tank crew in this wrenching concentration of raw emotion directed by Samuel Maoz.

Compared to Ari Folman's sophisticated animation-memory "Waltz With Bashir," another autobiographical film that dealt with the same war, "Lebanon" takes a very different, experiential approach to describe the sheer horror of warfare, rather than its political background. At times it seems the film, which goes heavy on close-ups and dialogue to make the most of a low budget, could have been set during World War II. That said, viewers with a strong interest in Israel and the Middle East are likely to make up the lion's share of the international audience for this disturbing, high-voltage festival film.

The action is set entirely within the claustrophobic confines of an armored tank; the only views of the outside world are through the cross-hairs of the gun barrel. Four hot, grime-streaked, twentysomething soldiers -- Shmuel the gunner, Assi the commander, Herzl the loader and Yigal the driver -- are manning the tank amid deafening noise and a sickening rocking and bumping motion when the vehicle is in motion. No one obeys orders and one by one they go into panic as they realize they have driven into a lethal trap.

Their commanding officer (Zohar Strauss) leads them and a ground force on a mission that at first seems like a piece of cake. All they have to do is to "clean up" a Lebanese town that has already been bombed by the Israeli Air Force and move on to a meeting point. It turns into a nightmare for these soft, panic-stricken soldiers, who can't bring themselves to pull the trigger on combatants and end up killing civilians instead.

This must qualify as one of the most anti-heroic war movies ever made; not a single character can stomach battle or shows the slightest courage towards his comrades, making mockery of a plaque that extols: "Man is steel. A tank is only iron." It is hard to care about these feckless characters, who miss their mothers back at home and seem unable to grasp the basics of what's going on around them. When a Syrian POW is lowered into the tank, they can't fathom his terror on being threatened by a ferocious Phalangist (a Christian Arab) out for his blood.

It the darkness of the tank, the scared boys' wide-eyed, grimy faces are hard to tell apart. What does come through is a visceral horror described without letup or dramatic relief. The long sequence in which they participate in shelling a building where a Christian family is being held hostage by terrorists is all the more powerful for being seen only through the cross-hairs of a gun; actress Reymonde Amsellem is unforgettable as the young mother whose family is killed in front of her eyes.

Production companies: Metro Communications, Ariel Films, Arsam International
Sales: Celluloid Dreams
Cast: Yoav Donat, Italy Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael moshonov, Zohar Strauss, Dudu Tassa, Ashraf Barhom, Reymonde Amsellem
Director: Samuel Maoz
Screenwriter: Samuel Maoz
Producer: Uri Sabag, Einat Bikel, Moshe Edery, Leon Edery, David Silber, Benjamina Mirnik, Ilann Girard
Director of photography: Giora Bejach
Production designer: Ariel Roshko
Music: Nicolas Becker
Costumes: Hila Bargirel
Editor: Arik Lahav-Leibovich

No MPAA rating, 93 minutes
Last edited by Dempsey on 08 Sep 2009 19:27, edited 1 time in total.
By kraychik
#13156970
I'd watch it. I watched 'Paradise Now' and 'Checkpoint' (both good films)... I even watched some of 'Occupation 101'. I'm progressive like dat. But ya, that film's got no chance of making it big anywhere, let alone Hollywood. I wonder if I'll be able to download it from somewhere.
By Dempsey
#13156984
I wonder if I'll be able to download it from somewhere.


I can't even find a trailer yet.
By Swinger7714
#13156986
Sounds unbelievably boring. Waltz with Bashir was one of the best films I ever saw, and this one is just trying to capitalize on waltzes success. Pathetic... reminds me of a movies called "transmorphers",
By Dempsey
#13156999
And they casted Oshri Cohen to another Lebanon movie. He didn't even serve in the army!
By kraychik
#13157005
If anyone here wants to download the movie "Checkpoint", let me know and I'll post it for download via Megaupload.com. Holla at me if you want it.
User avatar
By Nets
#13157082
I even watched some of 'Occupation 101'


One could not construct a more biased account of the situation.
User avatar
By War Angel
#13157978
Waltz with Bashir was a remarkable movie, but not a good 'documentary' piece. It was mostly an artistic triumph. Same goes for Kippur, by the way, another recommended piece. Don't bother with Beaufort, though. It's shit. And it has Oshri Cohen in it, the draft-dodging douchebag who makes a mockery of soldiers everywhere by constantly applying for roles of soldiers.

I'm really tired of all these anti-war Israeli war flicks. We could be making the best war films in the world, and instead, we make this gay, hippie, Arab-humping leftist propaganda. :hmm:

If I ever make an Israeli war film, it will be a pro-Israeli, pro-war piece of arse-kicking splendour. It will have Israeli soldiers with baby skulls attached to their vests, SF operatives ripping men's arms off, snipers blowing people's heads off from 2 kilometers away, terrorists being tortured, and it will end with a nuclear strike on all major Arab cities... it will be fun to make, and fun to watch. :D
By Dempsey
#13158049
War Angel

According to disgusting impression of the Hollywood Review reporter, what happens to Israeli manliness? do Israeli men return back to their "diaspora" phase cowardliness state? What happened to the Zionist revolution?
User avatar
By War Angel
#13158058
War Angel

According to disgusting impression of the Hollywood Review reporter, what happens to Israeli manliness? do Israeli men return back to their "diaspora" phase cowardliness state? What happened to the Zionist revolution?

Nothing, no, and I don't know what the 'Zionist revolution' is.

You see, film-makers wanna make 'special' films that show the 'other side of Israel'... but that's what they ALL do! Not ONE movie that I'm aware of shows the REAL side of Israel! The Spartan, unrelenting, innovative, humorous and nonchalant side. It's all hidden from non-Israelis, until they come here.
By Dempsey
#13158130
War Angel
I don't know what the 'Zionist revolution' is.


The only parctical lesson from the Holocaust was Jews must be ready to defend themselves. Up until than, Jews used to dodge drafting on every country they were living in. In Russia (before WW2) Jews used to put injury on their own bodies to escape enlisting. Nazi Germany had many groups that she saw as enemy but only with the Jews they were sure it's eazy target.


http://www.archive.org/stream/commandan ... p_djvu.txt

COMMANDANT OF AUSCHWITZ

The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess

As I have already frequently said, the Jews have strongly devel-
oped family feelings. They stick together like limpets. Nevertheless,
according to my observations, they lack solidarity. One would have
thought that in a situation such as this they would inevitably help
and protect one another. But no, quite the contrary. I have often
known and heard of Jews, particularly those from Western Europe,
who revealed the addresses of those members of their race still in
hiding.

One woman, already in the gas chamber, shouted out to a non-
commissioned officer lie address of a Jewish family. A man who, to
judge by his clothes and deportment, appeared to be of very good
standing gave me, while actually undressing, a piece of paper on
which was a list of the addresses of Dutch families who were hiding
Jews.

I do not know what induced the Jews to give such information.
Was it for reasons of personal revenge, or were they jealous that
those others should survive?

The attitude of the men of the Special Detachment was also
strange. They were all well aware that once the actions were com-
pleted they, too, would meet exactly the same fate as that suffered
by these thousands of their own race, to whose destruction they
had contributed so greatly. Yet the eagerness with which they
carried out their duties never ceased to amaze me. Not only did
they never divulge to the victims their impending fate, and were
considerately helpful to them while they undressed, but they were
also quite prepared to use violence on those who resisted. Then
again, when it was a question of removing the troublemakers and
holding them while they were shot, they would lead them out in
such a way that the victims never saw the noncommissioned officer
standing there with his gun ready, and he was able to place its
muzzle against the back of their necks without their noticing it It
was the same story when they dealt with the sick and the invalids,
who could not be taken into the gas chambers. And it was all done
in such a matter-of-course manner that they might themselves have
been the exterminators.

Then the bodies had to be taken from the gas chambers, and after
the gold teeth had been extracted, and the hair cut off, they had
to be dragged to the pits or to the crematoria. Then the fires in the
pits had to be stoked, the surplus fat drained off, and the mountain
of burning corpses constantly turned over so that the draught might
fan the flames.

They carried out all these tasks with a callous indifference as
though it were all part of an ordinary day's work. While they
dragged the corpses about, they ate or they smoked. They did not
stop eating even when engaged on the grisly job of burning corpses
which had been lying for some time in mass graves.

It happened repeatedly that Jews of the Special Detachment
would come upon the bodies of close relatives among the corpses,
and even among the living as they entered the gas chambers. They
were obviously affected by this, but it never led to any incident.

I myself saw a case of this sort. Once when bodies were being
carried from a gas chamber to the fire pit, a man of the Special
Detachment suddenly stopped and stood for a moment as though

rooted to the spot. Then he continued to drag out a body with his
comrades. I asked the Capo what <was up. He explained that the
corpse was that of the Jew's wife. I watched him for a while, but
noticed nothing peculiar in his behavior. He continued to drag
corpses along, just as he had done before. When I visited the
Detachment a little later, he was sitting with the others and eating,
as though nothing had happened. Was he really able to hide his
emotions so completely, or had he become too brutalized to care
even about this?

Where did the Jews of the Special Detachment derive the
strength to carry on night and day with their grisly work? Did they
hope that some whim of fortune might at the last moment snatch
them from the jaws of death? Or had they become so dulled by the
accumulation of horror that they were no longer capable even
of ending their own lives and thus escaping from this "existence"?

I have certainly watched them closely enough, but I have never
really been able to get to the bottom of their behavior. 1

The Jew's way of living and of dying was a true riddle that I
never managed to solve.

All these experiences and incidents which I have described could
be multiplied many times over. They are excerpts only, taken from
the whole vast business of the extermination, sidelights as it were.

This mass extermination, with all its attendant circumstances, did
not, as I know, fail to affect those who took a part in it. With very
few exceptions, nearly all of those detailed to do this monstrous
"work," this "service," and who, like myself, have given sufficient
thought to the matter, have been deeply marked by these events.

Many of the men involved approached me as I went my rounds
through the extermination buildings, and poured out their anxieties
and impressions to me, in the hope that I could allay them.

Again and again during these confidential conversations I was
asked: is it necessary that we do all this? Is it necessary that
hundreds of thousands of women and children be destroyed? And I,
who in my innermost being had on countless occasions asked my-
self exactly this question, could only fob them off and attempt to
console them by repeating that it was done on Hitler's order. I
had to tell them that this extermination of Jewry had to be, so that
Germany and our posterity might be freed forever from their
relentless adversaries.


User avatar
By Oxymoron
#13158160
In Russia (before WW2) Jews used to put injury on their own bodies to escape enlisting.


You dont know what the fuck your talking about.
User avatar
By War Angel
#13158163
Up until than, Jews used to dodge drafting on every country they were living in. In Russia (before WW2) Jews used to put injury on their own bodies to escape enlisting.

I wouldn't want to serve in the military of a despicable dictatorship that took all of my possessions, either.

In WWII, however, over 500,000 Jews (!) served in the Red Army, and the medal-winners among them far outweighed their relative numbers in the military.
User avatar
By danholo
#13158196
The only parctical lesson from the Holocaust was Jews must be ready to defend themselves. Up until than, Jews used to dodge drafting on every country they were living in. In Russia (before WW2) Jews used to put injury on their own bodies to escape enlisting. Nazi Germany had many groups that she saw as enemy but only with the Jews they were sure it's eazy target.


Many Jews did, indeed, dodge the draft but I wouldn't be surprised if this was common among normal Russians during the Empire as well. Despite this, Jews did serve in every army of their respective countries, even Germany in WW1. The original establishment of Finland's Jews originate from the Tzar's army in the mid 19th century. Of course these young Jewish kids were forced to join the military, full assimilation in mind. To add, I was at the "Diaspora Museum" today where they opened an exhibit about Finnish Jewry. While I'm of course familiar with the history of Finnish Jews, it reminded of the absurdity of the "field synagogue" set up on the front lines in the Continuation War between Russia and Finland, where the Jews of the Finnish army would congregate for holidays, and share treats from home, so they said. Not only that, they did this right under the German army's nose, who was allied with Finland at the time, and Russian Jewish captives came to the synagogue as well.

Weird shit.
By Dempsey
#13158267
About Zionist revolution self-image:

Early Herzilan Zionism apeal amongst the central European Jewry was the transformation promise of a Jew from Judenjunge (Jewboy) to junge Juden (Young Jew).

Joachim Doron ‘Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-Semitism: Parallels and Influences (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism: ‘It cannot be denied that the Jewish self-criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti-Semites.’ Ruppin, Klatzkin, Hess and Jabotinsky believed in the ‘new Jew’ as opposed to the ‘hideous’ speciment in the Jewish Diaspora.

Excerpted from The Controversy of Zion by Geoffrey Wheatcroft:
A form of social revenge was open to the gentile majority among the students. One fratenity or student union after another excluded Jews from membership, an example followed by sporting clubs throughout Austria. And in 1896, a convention of fraternities declared that in view of the 'lack of honour and character' the Jews had shown, 'no Jew is to be given satisfaction with any weapon'. This was an insult, but also a back-handed compliment. For years past, Jewish students had tried to beat their Christian contemporaries at their own game. A Jewish-nationalist fraternity, the Akademischer Verein Kadimah, had been founded at Vienna Univeristy in 1882. Jewish students refused to grovel before their tormentors but instead took part with gusto in the ritual of duelling, until the point when, as the Vienna corresondent of The Times put it, the best fencers of the fighting German corps found that Zionist students could gash cheeks quite as effectively as any Teuton and that 'the Jews were in a fair way to become the best swordsmen in the university'. Those Jewish sabreurs were among the first to set a new pattern. They had tried assimilation and been rejected. Their new motto was, as it were: if you can't join them, beat them. It was a historic departure for the Jews.

Previously Jews had considered dueling "un Jewish," but newer members refused to tolerate taunts that they were inherent cowards.



http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... 10532.html
By Swinger7714
#13160262
Up until than, Jews used to dodge drafting on every country they were living in. In Russia (before WW2) Jews used to put injury on their own bodies to escape enlisting.

Bulshit nazi propoganda... My father and grandfather served in the Red Army. Jews also served proudly in the German army during WW1, many of them were ace pilots. Tons of Jews served in the US army. Palestine Jews had their own brigade (called the jewish brigade) in the Royal Army which fought in Italy, and of course the IDF.
By Dempsey
#13160648
Swinger7714 wrote:Sounds unbelievably boring. Waltz with Bashir was one of the best films I ever saw, and this one is just trying to capitalize on waltzes success. Pathetic...


Trailer:


English: http://www.euronews.net/2009/09/11/anot ... r-lebanon/

This FT review says it's "the best competition film so far"


The Venice Film Festival
By Nigel Andrews

Published: September 11 2009 16:18 | Last updated: September 11 2009 16:18



Dripping with sweat, exhausted with combat and challenge, inured to darkness yet desperate for sleep. Who said a critic’s life was easy at a leading film festival? Here on the Adriatic, the humidity is off the chart, the films are beyond count and there is no exit strategy from an island quarantined for its annual plague of movie mania. Some colleagues are already starting to look like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice. Minds tottering, sun lotion running, they waste picturesquely away on the Lido.

But no: culture is no laughing matter and the opening description – trial by claustrophobia and high stress levels – more properly belongs to the best competition film so far. Israel’s Lebanon has everything: a powerful plot, prodigious direction (all the more so for a film set entirely inside a tank) and a passport to international controversy since the title invokes the 1982 Lebanese war. In a week that sees a concurrent film festival, Toronto, engulfed by Arab protest for screening a season of movies about Tel Aviv, Venice showcases this tale of four Israeli soldiers traversing 24 hours of nightmare – battle, entrapment, horror, death – in a war of (antagonists will claim) Israel’s own provoking.

Yet the main or only crime of Samuel Maoz’s film is mis-titling. It isn’t about the Lebanon war at all. It is about battle, all battle, and what it does inside men’s heads. The tank is not offered as a metaphor for that location, but it’s hard not to see this cramped shell where emotion and delirium are incubated as an expressionist vision of a soldier’s brain. Simultaneously, no film has more powerfully suggested the actuality of being in a tank. The oil-and-water-puddled floor; the grime of faces and the imagined stink of bodies; the darkness; the wrench and grind of the turning gun turret, its cross-haired sights our only view, for 90 minutes, of the outside world.

At one point a scared Syrian prisoner is dumped in the tank for convenience, then horrifically menaced in Arabic by a Phalangist ally-intruder, who at the end of his torture litany turns to the Israelis and says, in their language: “Treat him carefully, he is a prisoner of war.” Irony with a lethal edge. In the final scenes, even the irony runs out. The occupants are trapped in a ruined city prowled by the enemy, their only hope to choke the tank’s dying engine into final action and thunder down the nearest maze of alleys into escape or catastrophe. This formidable film transcends flags of nationhood to raise the universal, spectral ensign of war itself.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/effcb01e-9e61 ... abdc0.html
By Dempsey
#13161451
The film just won the Venice festival, now it will be Israel's nominee for the Oscars


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD9ALU9800

Israeli film on '82 Lebanon war wins Venice prize
(AP) – 21 minutes ago

VENICE, Italy — Israeli film "Lebanon," about the 1982 conflict in that Middle East country, has won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The festival jury announced the Golden Lion and other prizes Saturday night on the last day of the 11-day screening of films from around the world.

"Lebanon," directed by Samuel Maoz, tells the story of Israeli paratroopers searching a hostile town. Variety described the film as the "boldest and best of the recent mini-wave" of Israeli movies.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
User avatar
By danholo
#13161544
If I ever make an Israeli war film, it will be a pro-Israeli, pro-war piece of arse-kicking splendour. It will have Israeli soldiers with baby skulls attached to their vests, SF operatives ripping men's arms off, snipers blowing people's heads off from 2 kilometers away, terrorists being tortured, and it will end with a nuclear strike on all major Arab cities... it will be fun to make, and fun to watch. :D


It would be a hit all over the place, especially the Arab world.

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