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Waste of life

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 26th March 2008

Beaufort
15, Key Cities

Beaufort is the Israeli war film that won the Silver Bear at Berlin and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film and it is very, very dull. After I had seen it I sent a friend to see it who is much more war-literate than I am and afterwards he said, ‘Thanks. It was very, very dull.’ What, then, does this mean for the Bear that is Silver and the nomination that is Oscar? It’s the rubbish tip for them, my dears; the rubbish tip. It has to be because as you know, and as my more war-literate friend now knows to his cost, I am never wrong. I even quite liked Margot at the Wedding when everyone else said it was rubbish. I do wish all the other critics would get with the programme.

Anyway, this film is about a true event: Israel’s withdrawal — in 2000 — from Lebanon and the mountain-top stone fortress Beaufort. Beaufort, the opening credits helpfully explain, was built by Crusaders in the 12th century and captured by the Israeli Defence Force during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. This, by the way, is all the help you do get. Henceforward you are on your own and, often, you will certainly feel very much on your own, if not rather slighted and abandoned. Joseph Cedar, the director, obviously decided not to hold the audience’s hand. This is good until you get lost; at which point you are less interested in the film and more interested in trying to feel for the hand that isn’t there.

OK, this much I do know: what plot there is — and there isn’t very much, it doesn’t tell a story as such — follows the last couple of weeks of the Israeli occupation as mortars from surrounding Hezbollah troops (one assumes) shower the camp. The small remaining band of soldiers appear to spend most of their time trundling, almost like spacemen, down coffin-shaped, strip-lit, subterranean corridors which is confusing until you realise that they are not occupying the fortress itself, but some kind of modern, concrete outpost which has been built adjacent to it. (I’m no war strategist — seriously, I’m not — but as both sides appear to have agreed not to damage the actual castle, wouldn’t it be safer for the soldiers simply to hole out in that?)

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