"Foxtrot" - the second film of the Israeli director Samuel Maoz, one of the most powerful modern filmmakers. For his debut - "Lebanon" - Samuel Maoz in 2009 received the "Golden Lion".
Here is one of the rare cases when the word "long-awaited" is more than an ordinary journalistic stamp. In 2009, the 47-year-old Samuel Maoz, who debuted in the direction of the film "Lebanon", became the first Israeli in history to win the top prize at the world's most important festival - the Venetian "Golden Lion". Of course, the skeptics said, awarded only for the topic, in the film only one trick, it was just time for Israel to give. The second picture was supposed to confirm or refute doubts. Eight years had to wait for the film: some even suspected that Samuel Maoz would remain the director of one film. However, no - his "Foxtrot" is ready and again participates in the Venetian competition. Now it is difficult to deny the obvious: one of the most original and powerful directors of our time lives and works in Israel.
In contrast to the ideally assembled by the rules of three unities - the place, time and action - "Lebanon", "Foxtrot" refers us not to the classic, but to the ancient Greek drama. At its center are the impassive and implacable mechanisms of fate that govern the actions of a person without his knowledge. "Case is the way God keeps anonymity", said Einstein. Samuel Maoz confirmed the old aphorism, turning it into an elegant, coherent and psychologically convincing scenario.
The film has a three-act, but meaningfully paradoxical structure. In the first and third acts, parents (biblical beauty actors - Lior Ashkenazi and Sarah Adler) mourn the death of the son-soldier who died somewhere on the border. In the second, which is not a flashback at all, their son Yonatan is alive and well, he is bored and toils with fools along with his colleagues at the desert checkpoint at the rusted barrier. The detective component of the plot resembles "Oedipus" or "Iphigenia in Aulis"; All the more so because in the center of the plot there are interrelations between children and parents who are guilty in front of each other and are obviously forced to pay for this guilt with blood at some point.
At the same time, the tonality of the film is far from indulgence and strained tragedy. You can even call her frivolous: at some point, Samuel Maoz begins to tell the story with black and white comics, and when in the finals the parents who lost the child smoke the marijuana found in his stash and foolishly laugh, the viewer is ready to laugh with them. Dance title takes place three times. "Foxtrot" is the call sign of the checkpoint where Yonatan serves, a dance melody used for the soundtrack, and a circular closed structure of simple pas describing the plot structure.
Samuel Maoz is fascinating in the first act of his film with a rhythmic musical installation, camera operator ship and graphic design of the scenery (for example, a picture with an infinite number of "black squares", a kind of square chasm) hangs on the wall of the Yonatan parents' apartment. All this seems to distract from the terrible trauma experienced by the heroes who have just received terrible news. In the second act, we move into the desert, into the eternal absurd "Waiting for Godot" mode. As already mentioned, God is anonymous, and in any case, none of the characters believes in him, so the climax or the outcome here is impossible in principle: the director appoints a lonely camel as the performer of a higher will. In the third, we are again in the apartment — plunging into the theatrical intimacy of the closed interior, where the exuberant formalism of the previous parts is inferior to the modest, sober, inconspicuous manner of shooting, finally allowing us to examine the characters and hear their words. With the sound of Samuel Maoz, as in the previous film, works masterly, then dumbfounded by sharp drops in the level and forcing a flinch, then forcing to listen to a whisper.
The main drawback of Israeli cinema is its obsession with the country's purely internal problems, whether it be conflicts with radical radicals or the complex feelings of Israelis towards Palestinians. At the outside public, this causes respect at best, but understanding or even more empathy is extremely rare. "Foxtrot" also explores purely Israeli intergenerational relationships: the last witnesses of the Holocaust, their children - the first to be born in Israel, and grandchildren - modern young people who want to live in a global world and have difficulty understanding the value system of their parents. However, beyond this range, "Foxtrot" remains an excellent tragicomedy about the fall into sin and retribution, forgiveness and mercilessness, love and indifference. In addition, the fact that even a tragic fate can be lived like a dance - without thinking about the meaning or consequences, but just watching how you would not get out of rhythm.
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
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