After watching this moving I was not really sure what to think and I am still not really sure what to think. I was frustrated with the seeming ignorance or inconsideration on the part of the "command" in regards to the loss of life of the soldiers. Ziv, for example, seems well aware that he is going to die, that the bomb is most likely going to explode but yet those in charge do not seem to take this into consideration. Perhaps if this was a necessary road that needed to be clear, Ziv's death would seem less pointless. However, as it is later stated in the movie, the road was not that important.
I thought the movie achieved the goal of showing how war is futile. The fact that the soldiers are, for all practical purposes, guarding a large hill for mere ideological reasons and in doing so, waiting to be hit by missiles, leaves little room for one to argue the necessity of war. This particular example also strengthens the above idea that those in command are not concerned with the collateral damage, in this case soldiers, on the small scale.
Juxtaposed to the notion of the futility of war is Liraz's attachment to his assignment and to the ideology of Beaufort. Liraz is distraught at the idea of having to leave Beaufort. He loses his temper at his soldiers when they try to remove the dog and equipment from the station. Further in the middle of the movie, Liraz says he knows that he should abandon the station, that command's orders are not in the best interest of the soldier, but he says he physically is incapable of leaving. At another point in the film it is said that Liraz is just happy that they gave him a job as a commander. I would suggest that Liraz might be attached to having a purpose or feeling like he has a purpose. Thus by acting on his suspicions of command's poor judgment, Liraz risks losing his sense of direction in life. It's almost as if Liraz wants to buy into the ideology of Beaufort but he knows that doing so is just as meaningless as the war.
Overall, I am still not sure how I feel about this movie and I am quite sure there is something else going on that I am missing. I am not sure I would recommend it for viewing without also having some contextual information about the conflict between Lebanon and Israel.
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I also wrote about the problem of ideology for the soldiers in Beaufort. I think all of them are grasping for something (for most of them it's home) and Liraz adopts this unnatural attachment to the very place that imprisons him. There is some subtext in this film that I, too, had difficulty deciphering, but, overall, I think it speaks, just as you said, to the futility of war.
ReplyDeleteI, too, had many mixed feelings after watching this movie. It really raised a lot of questions in my head (both about the conflict between Lebanon and Israel and about what was going on in the movie... at times I had a hard time following!). I agree that this wouldn't be a great movie to show without contextual information... I feel like I could have appreciated it a little more if I had had some background information prior to viewing it.
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