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Waste of life

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 26th March 2008

Beaufort
15, Key Cities

In this eerie world the colours are so washed out and the light so shadowy and the sounds so hushed and the helmets so weird — more like huge bath caps in camouflage fabric — that you probably won’t get a handle on who is who until it is too late and they’re dead, and maybe not even then. Who was that who just died? Was it the one who has the girlfriend Michelle? Who was that one anyway? Between shellings there are several fleshing-out moments but what might have been achieved is almost entirely lost in the murk. OK, I’ll forgo the hand, but might I have a lamp?

Still, we do eventually realise, at least, that the men — more boys, really — are under the command of Liraz (Oshri Cohen; also more of a boy; beautiful eyelashes). Liraz is something on the mountain, a leader, with a tendency to be a bit rulebound until the growing body count forces him to question his and his country’s heroic ideals. Why are they dying here when they’re not watching over very much and are about to leave anyway? This is not, actually, a political film. We never see the enemy. We are never asked if it’s right or wrong for Israel to be here. (Right, probably, as Israel, like me, is never wrong.) These soldiers could be any soldiers. But neither is this a celebration of effort, courage, triumph or brothers in action. This is, instead, about the tedium and dreariness of war; the claustrophobia and the senselessness, all of which it conveys so faithfully it becomes tedious and dreary in and of itself.

You just don’t really feel the terror of the soldiers, or the futility, as you do in, say, Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. This was also about the waste of human lives, but at least it wasted them grippingly. Beaufort is a film in which nothing much happens and nothing much happens slowly in the dark. Take it or leave it. Maybe the Bear and Oscar are right although, considering I’m never wrong, it’s hardly likely, is it?