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Soul-Searching in Israeli Cinema: A Certain Vietnam Dissatisfaction Is Spreading
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13927 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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2 / 1988 |
2,040 Words |
| Author
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Dan Yakir
Dan Yakir writes on film for various national publications. |
In recent years, Israeli cinema has slowly shifted from mass entertainment aimed at the lowest common denominator to increasingly relevant fare, with strong social and political overtones. Israeli films are now featuring exceedingly unconventional heroes--from soldiers running amok to Palestine Liberation Organization sympathizers.
With Israeli society undergoing an intense soul-searching as the political Right and Left seem unable to reach a common ground--presenting parallels to America in the Vietnam years--Israeli filmmakers have been in the foreground of social comment. This means the status quo is neither taken for granted nor celebrated. Instead, alternatives are examined and the human factor is observed with new, often startlingly unexpected insights.
Changing Role
The changing role of the outsider, especially the Arab, in an environment previously depicted as homogeneous, has figured largely in Israel's most recent films. Arabs are increasingly depicted not as sidekicks or villains, the way minorities often seem to be portrayed in Hollywood, but as full-fledged heroes in sagas that do not shy away from self-criticism. Filmmakers are seeming to reflect ever more the role of the alienated intellectual.
The smashing commercial successes of two recent Israeli films, Renen Schorr's Late Summer Blues (Blues Hachofesh Hagadol) and Eli Cohen's 1986 film Ricochets (Shtei Etzba'ot Mi'tsidon) bear proof that the Israeli public is willing to spend its hard-earned entertainment shekels on self-examination. Schorr's film depicts the soul searching of high-school graduates on the eve of their induction into the army, while Cohen's is an Israel Defense Forces training film that becomes a powerful drama about soldiers questioning their moral and military involvement in Lebanon.
In Late Summer Blues, the directorial debut of a film lecturer at the Beit Zvi Institute, seven teenaged boys and girls confront their future as they face induction into the Armed Forces in 1970, a time when the War of Attrition at the Suez Canal drags on. Not only will the boys have to face the possibility of death on the battlefront, but for the first time they all must examine the options before them in a reality traditionally dominated by a mentality of "No choice"--namely, that Israel has no choice but to defend itself against its enemies by force.
Much of this
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