Lebanon (2009)

first of all I've heard all the comments about the weak shot. For me this was the reason I watched it. It's a story of young men thrown into conflict with little or no training. And the whole idea of what they see from that enclosed space is for me the most compelling part of the film. As an exercise in claustrophobic atmosphere it wins hands down. This was not a big budget film this wasn't your Private Ryan this was Das Boot set in a tank. Although I agree the tactics and deployment of the tank were at best the logical and against modern warfare theories. It was done for artistic license, which you have to in these situations. More than anything from me it boiled down to a few young men making very grown-up and misinformed decisions. But isn't that the point? In Old Man's War Novel by John Scalzi he explores this very thing. And tries to make the position that until you have lived a life you cannot determine the life of another.

I don't even have to get to the story, much less the themes or worry about whether it's too blatantly anti-war, pro-Israeli or whatever your politics say. Ignore that. No, it just seems so very, very fake. Like it's an elaborate stage production. Such that I'd have been happier if it was obviously so. If the exterior scenes were all similarly staged it would have worked.What I mean is not minor gripes about detail: what tank their in, the amount of room, not wearing helmets, the tank being lower than a person, etc. Those are annoying, but not critical. No, I mean how the tank looks like a set. Different parts move, and they wobble like crew is behind it pushing it. Smoke, from starting or explosions, looks like someone off-stage puffed some smoke in. The grime is clearly not from action seen in the movie, but is painted on so is on the back of boxes and around corners and too consistent. It doesn't match much of the dialog or implication that they are in this indestructible device. Of course it breaks down over the course of the film: it's made of plywood and paint. This was only matched by the ham-handed characterizations, and the inexplicable inability of the crew to act human. Even before the first engagement (where it's like the gunner, then everyone, is being stalked by a horror-movie killer) they act like tween schoolgirls who don't want to clean their room. Forget soldiers, soldiers trained enough to operate a tank, what /adults/ act like this? Vastly, vastly believable, so impossible for me to understand or care about anything, or anyone in it.

Some things are a bit artificial and take away from the experience in a bid to make it more "fine art" sort of film - overly long shots of sunflower fields, close-ups on actors' eyes, etc.The story and characters are a bit typical like the weak commander, mistakes and poor judgement in battle or death of a character in a specially tragic or sensitive moment. There is essentially no story or character development. The little there is, was already done in "Beaufort" two years prior.One should abstract oneself from any political context when viewing this film and judge it for what it is. However, the sensitivity of the topic has obviously contributed to the film's acclaim.Great work by virtually all of the actors should be noted though. This could have been a much better film if the actors were given more space (in terms of plot and characters) to really shine.

As a war movie this is ordinary with ordinary insights, but a neat idea in terms of abstraction. We are inside a tank, this as the mind's eye, looking out at fleeting glimpses of war, moving north to madness. We share the perspective of young Israeli soldiers throughout and nothing more. We are baffled at what it's all supposed to be out there, who is on our side and where's the rest of the army. We see as they see through the viewfinder, the experience both framed and as it happens, which mirrors our own experience. The outside images are meant to unravel some of the maddening complexity of war, guerillas using human shields, a distraught mother looking for her child reaps a moment of affection, but more abstractly this: the inability of the mind to make sense of incomprehensible reality and create a narrative out of it. So I don't mind overmuch the stock characters and situations, the tank commander who loses it, the shooter with a conscience and so on. I do mind that more is not made of the self-referential nature of seeing and story, too bad because the parts are all there. Forget about Saving Ryan or Hurt Locker, this concept has tremendous power, war as mobilized by images in the eye. A great study, akin to Blowup.Imagine. A journey linking transient human reflections in the pools of water on the tank floor, to harried images of harried reality flashing by, to fixed images of images in the photos and advertising posters of the travel agency, unreal in this context. And all of them framed, transient snapshots of story, as is war, as we consume war. It's all in the film, almost, but the focus is on more predictable stuff.The ending is effective in this regard. What if there is no story out there in the universe? Where is the music coming from? What does it mean that the same godhead can imagine tanks and sunflower fields? Near the end the eye is cracked. Alas, a missed chance overall.