“I dedicate this award to the thousands of people all over the world who, like me, come back from war safe and sound,” said Israeli war veteran and (first-time) filmmaker Samuel Maoz (above, lower photo) upon receiving the Golden Lion for his graphically violent war drama Lebanon at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. “Apparently they are fine, they work, get married, have children. But inside the memory will remain stabbed in their soul.” (On his notes for the film, Maoz writes: "On June 6, 1982, at 6:15 a.m., I killed a man for the first time in my life.")
Set during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Lebanon chronicles the travails of an Israeli tank crew sent to rescue a platoon of paratroopers trapped in a town surrounded by Syrian commandos. This may sound like Black Hawk Down meets Waltz with Bashir meets Beaufort, but Lebanon seems to be anything but derivative.
A "powerful and original film," as per Roderick Conway Morris in the New York Times, Lebanon is set mostly within the confines of the Israeli tank, reportedly showing war as a relentlessly brutal, nasty, ugly, bloody, maddening mess — apparently without turning it into a big-screen videogame à la Black Hawk Down.
"The production is courageous, too," adds Conway Morris, "in depicting an operation that goes badly wrong and the desperation of a group of soldiers, both veterans and raw conscripts, who feel they have been abandoned to their fate by their superiors when they are told over the radio to improvise as best they can to make their escape. The audacious and unpredictable way Lebanon tells its story will give future filmmakers much to think about when trying to depict the realities of war on screen."
Lebanon stars Oshri Cohen, Zohar Shtrauss, Michael Moshonov, Itay Tiran, Yoav Donat, and Reymond Amsalem.
Photos: Courtesy Venice Film Festival
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cant wait to see this one. i think itll be one of the best movies of the year. they say its even better than bashir