Let’s be frank, the so-called BDS movement
is anti-Semitic, through and through. Its real goal is to weaken the State of
Israel, so that it can be easily toppled by its neighbors, who resent its progressive
policies of LGBT rights, equality for women, religious liberty, and environmental
protection. Predictably, the Israeli Film Festival in Paris was on the
receiving end of BDS calls to boycott, but this year it was also shunned by Israel’s
culture minister, for its choice of opening night selection. It is an odd spot
for the festival to find itself in and it is all over a scene that probably
doesn’t need to be in the film in question. It is so rife with controversy, it will
be hard for many to dispassionately consider all aspects of the film (but that
is what we are here for) when Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot
opens this Friday in New York.
It is clear IDF bereavement officers have
done this grim task many times before by the smoothness of their response when
Daphna Feldmann collapses at the door. Her husband Michael is conscious, but
nearly in clinical shock at the news of their son Jonathan’s death. While his
wife sleeps under sedation, he goes about the grim business of making
notifications, almost out of misplaced passive aggressive anger. And then there
is the first of two closely-related game-changing revelations.
Maoz than rewinds to show what transpired
over the last few days at the sleepy check-point Jonathan had been stationed
at. Discipline is so slack among these bored young enlisted men, they make the characters
of Zero Motivation look like crack
commandos. However, something will happen.
In the case of Foxtrot, the tri-part structure actually makes organic sense.
However, the scenes with Jonathan in the desert have nothing like the power and
intensity of the bookends featuring his grieving parents. Yet, that is where
all the controversy lies, because some object to its depiction of a wrongful
border shooting that the top brass subsequently cover-up. Granted, Maoz is playing
with notions of fate and karma, very much in the tradition of Greek classical
tragedy, but there could have been other ways to ironically tempt destiny
without handing ammunition to Israel’s haters. In fact, the overlong mid-section
is the weakest link, in terms of narrative and drama.
On the other hand, Lior Ashkenazi gives an
achingly arresting performance as the anguished Feldmann father. He has a lot
of fire and fury in the first act, but the quiet resignation of the third act
will be what gets most viewers. There is something acutely poignant about the
way he can sit and calmly talk with Sarah Adler’s Daphna Feldmann, even after
everything that has transpired between them. They most definitely deliver
awards caliber work, with the third act sealing the deal.
Maoz has served up some of the most incisive
cinematic critiques of Israel’s militarized mentality, but you would think he
would also inclined to criticize the violent ideological extremism they face as
well, given the Foxtrot was initially
inspired by his family’s tangential brush with terrorism. Apparently, his
eldest daughter was in the habit of asking for cab fare when she was running
late for high school, so one morning, to make a point, he forced her to take
the bus. Tragically, a terrorist blew himself up on the #5 line she should have
been on, but he learned twenty-some minutes later, she was late for it as well.
Yes, fate plays a role when the threat of terror is a constant presence.
Divorcing Foxtrot from the current political context surrounding it is a
tricky proposition, but it is worth doing, to appreciate the visceral power of
Ashkenazi and Adler. What matters about this film is the painfully true to life
family drama, not the fictionalized events that did not happen in an
unsupervised border crossing. Recommended on those terms, Foxtrot opens this Friday (3/2) in New York, at the Angelika Film
Center.
