Berlinale Dispatch. Beaufort.

As that old saying goes, it seems like only yesterday when the Beaufort Castle, a Crusaders' fort in southern Lebanon, was captured by Israeli forces as part of their invasion and occupation of that country that lasted 20 years. The battle for Beaufort was in 1982, and even then it seemed as if the attack and the long siege that followed resulted in such a huge waste of lives on both sides that those losses should have been good reason to pull out long before the Israelis actually did. It took them many more lives, a dark ominous hardening of its armed forces and another 18 years to learn that lesson. Of course, the Israelis didn't learn much, because they invaded Lebanon again in July 2006 - just a month and a week after Joseph Cedar wrapped his new film, Beaufort [site] but more about that later - and you have to wonder why the inexperienced Israeli Prime Minister who ordered that ultimately humiliating invasion is still in power, much as you have to wonder why the Bush administration that mishandled the Iraq invasion and wasted so many lives on both sides is still running things in Washington.

In the ably-directed and well-acted Beaufort, which was adapted from the novel by the journalist Ron Leshem, who also wrote the screenplay, Cedar gets at the some of the eternal questions but skirts the more immediate uncomfortable ones. The soldiers at an Israeli outpost just next to Beaufort in 2000 are fighting like all soldiers to keep each other alive, living on top of each other in close quarters as they're being shot at, often scorning their superiors, ignoring the religious devotion of some of their peers, and asking that they either be allowed to fight aggressively or just withdraw. Rockets rain down on them, killing the unfortunate ones who happen to be outside when a rocket hits. You never see an Arab of any kind, or any other enemy. You never hear an explanation for why Israel invaded in the first place. It's an Israeli version of Das Boot, although I'm not sure how Cedar would welcome that parallel.

Friends die in their friends' arms, and the commanders somewhere far away don't seem to care, and finally, the Israelis blow up their own fortifications after abandoning them.

Had nothing happened in Lebanon this summer, Beaufort would have been just another film, albeit a courageous one for Israel, about the lives of young grunts who have barely begun their lives, and who follow orders that don't make sense and try to emerge alive and unmaimed. Given the pointless invasion of Lebanon last summer, which destroyed the country's infrastructure, the subject becomes something else, the idiocy of leaders who believe against all the evidence that Israel can stay alive by bludgeoning everything around it.

American-born Joseph Cedar served in the Israeli Defense Forces during the First Intifada, and tried to become an officer, hoping for a career, but failed the psychological tests. His film suggests that he might not have made much of a difference if he had stayed with the IDF. His film certainly elevates this year's Berlinale competition.

Posted by dwhudson at February 15, 2007 1:30 PM