What a waste of my time!!!

Waste of time

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Devastating documentary on what three years of compulsory military service does to many young Israelis who live through it. Being burnt out and mentally fatigued in serving in places like the dangerous West Bank and Gaza as well as, when the film was made, the 2006 Israeli Lebanese war these men and women are given some 15,000 shekels, or $4,300.00 in US currency, to get their head back together. Many, as much as 20,000, of these former IDF-Israeli Defense Force- members choose to travel to India and in the tranquil setting of the Himalayan Mountains and hot sun drenched forests they chill out on drugs that they have an unlimited supply of. It's in these strange surrounding far from home that as many as 2,000 ex-Israeli servicemen and women flip out and end up with severe psychological problems because of their non stop drug use. The movie "Flipping Out" goes into detail on this phenomenon that's causing far more damage to the IDF then the casualties it suffers in combat.We seen in the documentary how the rigors of war and occupation has caused many Israeli soldiers to turn to drugs to make then overcome what they experienced in preforming their duties as members of the IDF. Going to India to get help only leads many Israelis to get addicted to dangerous drugs which they for the most part uses as much as 14 hours a day!There's of course a number of self help programs in India sponsored by the Israeli Government as well as the local Jewish fundamentalist Chabd Houses that do their best to get these soldiers back on the right track as drug-free and productive Israeli citizens. But without the soldiers willing to get help all they can do is get those hopelessly addicted back to Israel to get expert psychological care and drug rehabilitation treatment.What the movie "Flipping Out" brings out is how war can effect a person's mental health if he or she's not ready to face the horrors that it exposes them to. In the case of the mostly strung out Israeli soldiers living and partying, on drugs, on the Indian sub-Continent that even trying to escape from their past, as man and women in combat, is anything but an easy solution.The one good thing going for these unfortunate lost souls in the windiness is that their government accepts and takes full responsibility for the mental and psychical, in sending then to war, suffering that their going through. These soldiers are given all the help-free of charge- that they could get in order to put their shattered lives back together again. Which is a lot more then the help that's given to returning veterans from similar conflicts in far off lands by the governments who so willingly and readily sent them to fight and die there.

Every Israeli, man or woman, is expected to serve three years in the Army (though there are, of course, exemptions for the religious fundamentalists who populate the illegal settlements that are a constant irritant in the Holy Land). After completing their service, these shell-shocked youngsters then head off to Goa, India, where they treat the symptoms of PTSD with heavy doses of hashish, LSD, and techno music. Flipping Out examines this phenomenon and the efforts of the Israeli government to address what is, apparently, quite a serious problem. Them's the facts, but the film is poorly focused and fails to cast much light on the phenomenon: we meet a few stoners, hear a few stories, and see some folks intervene, but for non-Israeli viewers it's hard to get terribly worked up about it all. The film is resolutely low-key and, even at only 83 minutes, too long.