Don't Believe the Hype

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This movie touches an important issue and the idea was very promising. However Foxtrot is so slow, so boring that after 10 minutes of watching I almost fell asleep. What the makers of Foxtrot wanted to tell us? That a group of Israeli young zombies is fighting unnessesary war with an unknown enemy? This is an absolutely false suggestion. The war is not defined by Israelis and their enemy is very well known. The story with buried Arab car and an attempt by Israeli commander to cover it up is absolutely implausable. Never happened and couldn't happen. Three Arabs are killed and nobody is going to investigate it? That's a pure propagandistic drivel. Not worth to watch. It's an artistic failure of an international team.

The loss of a child can bring unspeakable sorrow, caught in its essence by Samuel Moaz's Foxtrot a stunning study of an Israeli family's tragedy. Their fallen son is not just the Feldman family's loss; it can be an emblem of the Israeli storied toughness set against the absurdity of its fight and the cost to a relatively small but prominent world population.Basically a tripartite film, Foxtrot's first section languishes with the father, Michael (Lior Ashkenazi), as he responds to the universal call of two soldiers coming up their sidewalk, announcing the death to a fainting mother, Daphna (Sarah Adler). Moaz's shots are largely close up and over head both intended for us to feel his pain and his alienation. Never do these shots seem artsy; they are where we would be if we could enter Michael's space and view him from a judgment pov. For the second part, which shows the son, Jonathan (Yonotan Shiray), at a desert outpost, the camera is more distant and the light much brighter. As the narrative shows a soldier dancing with a rifle and an animated black and white sequence accompanied by a suckled breast, the tone has changed to playful and absurd. This airy sequence is appropriately comical to heighten the daily tragedies.Part three is the natural outcome of grief, itself accompanied by the foxtrot of the title, a simple dance to counter the daunting complexity of death and its aftermath. The film is a study of loss and grief exacerbated by a gritty culture that does not negotiate with the enemy and constantly deals with the Holocaust in its grief-laden memory.All this and more is in a remarkably deep and sometimes light study of war and its outcomes. Foxtrot was Israel's entry in the Oscar sweepstakes this year and deserving its considerable attention.

In my opinion this movie is really an art masterpiece. The cinematography and the mise-and-scène are both stunning and contribute perfectly to the development of the story and the message behind it. The images shown are absolutely beautiful and the acting is subtle, but convincing. This movie is funny, yet moving and it really makes you think. There are some surprising turns but it's great how all the elements in it seem to make sense once the film is over.

Greetings again from the darkness. The most dreaded knock on the door. Every parent or spouse of someone who has served their country during war time fully understands that indescribable feeling of opening the door and seeing uniformed soldiers waiting to deliver the worst possible news. That knock is how Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz (LEBANON, 2009) chooses to open his film. Knowing her son Daniel is dead sends Daphna (Sarah Adler) into hysterics, and the experienced messengers know to administer something to help her relax and sleep. Her husband Michael (Lior Ashkenazi, FOOTNOTE) stands stunned, mostly unable to respond.What follows is one of the most stunning first Act performances we've seen on the big screen. That is not hyperbole. Mr. Ashkenazi is remarkable over the first approximately 20 minutes as a parent in shock, experiencing devastating grief. The news is debilitating to his physical and mental being. Additionally, the filmmaking during this segment is quite something to behold. The close-ups add a heavy dose of humanity, while the terrific overhead camera angle presents Michael as trapped, while also adding to the disorientation that is so key. The one-hour alarm set to remind him to "drink some water" would be humorous if not for the fact that its structure prevents the man from totally breaking down.The second Act takes us away from Daphna's and Michael's contemporary Tel Aviv apartment and plops us into a remote military outpost where 4 young soldiers are charged with guarding a road passage. Thanks to this boring assignment, the young men find ways of adding interest to their days: timing canned goods that roll down the ever-increasing slope of their sinking-in-the-muck domicile container, raising the bar for the periodic camel that lopes by, and giving the rare passers-by a bit of a hard time as their ID's are checked. 'Of course, this is war territory, so when something goes wrong, it goes terribly and horrifically wrong.Our final Act takes us back to the original apartment as Michael, Daphna and their daughter are working to reconcile their feelings and somehow re-assemble the pieces of their shattered lives ... though the shifts from that heartbreaking first Act are what sets the script apart from so many movies. Cinematographer Giora Bejach continues the exemplary camera work during this curious segment that leaves us feeling somewhat uncertain at first.This family is stuck in the war that never ends. Like so many in the area, they carry burdens, guilt and grief that, like the war, also never ends. That first Act is transcendent filmmaking and acting, and the three acts work together as a prime example of the melding of visual and emotional storytelling. Most of the film takes place in one of two locales, and it's the subtleties in each shot that tell us what we must know. And yes, the foxtrot dance does play a role, but like most of this film, it's best discovered on your own.