Beaufort

I've now seen three of the five films nominated for Best Foreign Language film for last year's Oscar (Katyn and 12 are not yet available on DVD). As with The Counterfeiters (the winner) and Mongol, Beaufort is a mediocre film that aspires to more than it delivers.

An Israeli film directed by Joseph Cedar, Beaufort refers to a castle in southern Lebanon that goes back to the days of the Crusades. It changed hands many times over a thousand years, and was seized by Israel in 1982. In 2000 they evacuated it for good, and this story concerns the last group of Israeli soldiers who manned it.

The early parts of the film are very evocative. The atmosphere almost suggests a horror film, as a bomb expert arrives so he can disarm a device that blocks the road (Hezbollah are in the hills, pestering the Israeli soldiers). He is almost instantly confused by the meandering tunnels (that have the look of a spaceship, which gives it that "Alien" feeling). But his confusion is also the viewers, at least this one. Throughout the film I never really got a good sense of who was who or what the military strategy was. The soldiers wanted to leave, but continued to have obstacles, but then top brass seemed to come and go without difficulty. The only character I got a good sense of was the commander, played by Oshri Cohen, a by-the-book young man who ultimately fails his men.

This film is far too moody and talky to succeed as a war film, and perhaps it's because I'm unfamiliar with the politics and culture it didn't resonate with me as a drama. There were a few things that I found interesting: it's an interesting by-product of the technology of the era that the men could watch on television what was going on around them (I remember feeling the same thing while watching Three Kings, when Mark Wahlberg was able to call home on a cell phone--certainly the Gulf War was the first conflict where that could happen). Also, an early scene showing dummies set up on the parapets to draw enemy fire reminded me of a similar situated in the similarly titled Beau Geste.