{"id":28143,"date":"2018-03-16T03:51:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T10:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28143"},"modified":"2018-03-15T22:53:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T05:53:36","slug":"foxtrot-steps-on-toes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/03\/16\/foxtrot-steps-on-toes\/","title":{"rendered":"Foxtrot steps on toes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Itay Exlroad as Dancer Soldier. (photo by Giora Bejach, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

An audacious work of art that melds raw emotion and absurdist allegory into a blistering assessment of contemporary Israel, Samuel Maoz\u2019s Foxtrot<\/em> deserves to be seen and demands to be discussed.<\/p>\n

Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival \u2013 where Maoz\u2019s taut debut, Lebanon<\/em>, won the Golden Lion in 2009 \u2013 and eight Ophir Awards (Israel\u2019s Oscars), including best film, director and actor, Foxtrot<\/em> uses a small-scale story to examine some of Israel\u2019s deepest issues: the concept of military sacrifice, the oppression of Palestinians and the legacy of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Skilfully strewn with ironies all the way to the final shot, Foxtrot<\/em> was shortlisted for the Academy Award for best foreign language film but did not receive a nomination.<\/p>\n

The film begins with a middle-aged man (the sublime Lior Ashkenazi, who played a fictitious prime minister last year in Norman<\/em> and Yitzhak Rabin in this month\u2019s 7 Days in Entebbe<\/em>) opening his door to the worst possible news for a father with a son in the army. Even as the gravity of the situation and the intensity of his response wallops us in the face and grabs us by the collar, Maoz counter-intuitively undercuts the emotional naturalism with precision camerawork and a stylized set design.<\/p>\n

It appears, at first, that the filmmaker is evoking the surreal, detached and alienating experience of being struck with a life-changing bulletin. But we get the nagging feeling, from Ashkenazi\u2019s character\u2019s black-humour interactions with the army representatives to the off-centre introductions of his wife and daughter, that there\u2019s more on tap than the melodrama of domestic tragedy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Maoz pulls the rug out from under us, then cuts from the climate-controlled setting of a high-in-the-sky condo to an isolated checkpoint in the barren, forgotten north of Israel. This is where the son, Yonatan, is assigned the \u201cmission\u201d of guarding a remote, nonessential road with a handful of other bored young men.<\/p>\n

The tilted shipping container that comprises the soldiers\u2019 base and barracks fronts on a puddle-strewn mudfield, which they must trudge across to the checkpoint. The roadblock itself is cartoonishly minimalist, resembling a set you\u2019d see onstage more than a military installation, and putting us in mind of surrealist (anti-)war films like Apocalypse Now<\/em> and Catch-22<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nothing happens in this God-forsaken spot, and everything happens here. Each detail has significance, though one must pay close attention because it may not be clear until events play out. In fact, the meaning of a close-up or sound cue often remains obscure until the movie is over, at which point the viewer is required to arrive at his or her interpretation.<\/p>\n

Two key events occur at Yonatan\u2019s base: one at the checkpoint involving a carload of Palestinians heading home from a party and the other in the barracks when the soldiers are killing lonely downtime. The latter scene, in which Yonatan relates an anecdote from his father\u2019s youth, is the most astonishing passage in this taboo-trampling movie.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Left to right: Danny Isserles as Official Military Officer, Yehuda Almagor as Avigdor, Michael\u2019s brother, and Lior Ashkenazi as Michael. (photo by Giora Bejach, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yonatan has rendered his memory into a graphic novel, and Maoz brings it to life in the form of animation. This harrowing episode connects the Holocaust \u2013 and the self-reliance, persistence, shared sacrifice and residual faith that survivors applied to building the Jewish state \u2013 to a modern Israel, where idealism has curdled into a pursuit of temporary pleasures, and worse offences.<\/p>\n

To be sure, in every land and every age, older generations castigate young people for ignoring tradition and abandoning their core values. But this parable takes place in Israel, so Yonatan\u2019s father\u2019s hormone-driven rashness hearkens to Esau swapping his birthright for a bowl of stew.<\/p>\n

Threaded through Foxtrot<\/em> is a critique of Israel\u2019s leaders for maintaining a culture of cynicism and corruption that results in the unnecessary deaths of young soldiers. Furthermore, each loss is described as heroic regardless of the circumstances.<\/p>\n

This is not unique to Israel, of course, but it\u2019s harder to push back against the military spin when you\u2019re a small country surrounded by enemies than a superpower. Maoz satirizes PR functionaries in the opening scene, in fact, and never stops spearing sacred cows.<\/p>\n

Maoz\u2019s triumph, finally, thanks in large measure to Ashkenazi\u2019s unexpectedly vulnerable performance, is tracking the human cost amid the not-quite-real scenarios and sociopolitical commentary. Foxtrot<\/em> is an altogether remarkable work, not least because it is a beautiful film about ugly truths.<\/p>\n

Foxtrot<\/em> is in Hebrew with English subtitles, runs 113 minutes and is rated R for some sexual content, including graphic images and brief drug use. It opens at Vancity Theatre on March 23, and runs to April 1.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Itay Exlroad as Dancer Soldier. (photo by Giora Bejach, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics) An audacious work of art that melds raw emotion and absurdist allegory into a blistering assessment of contemporary Israel, Samuel Maoz\u2019s Foxtrot deserves to be seen and demands to be discussed. Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[7962,1739,4330,7117,7963,5412],"class_list":["post-28143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-foxtrot","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-military","tag-movies","tag-war"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}