There are no heroes in this part of Lebanon

The claustrophobic atmosphere inside the tank
10 April 2012

The setting is the war in South Lebanon in 1982. Four young Israeli conscripts are holed up in a tank, separated from their unit in the middle of nowhere. They receive the order to enter an Arab village already devastated by an air strike but, when the tank grinds to a halt, they are advised to get out again quickly before they are ambushed. Then the engine stalls and hysteria reigns. It looks as if they have had it in a big way.

Samuel Maoz’s cheaply but highly effectively made debut feature, which won the Golden Lion at Venice last year, seldom leaves the frightened quartet, sweating within their vulnerable engine of destruction. We see them shoot at a "terrorist", who uses a local family as cover, leading them to kill a husband and child as well as the gunman. We see a captured Syrian cowering in the tank as a Phalangist soldier, supporting the Israelis, tells him what he will do to him if the Israelis let him go. We watch as the crew quarrel with each other when the driver is killed in a rocket attack.

The least that can be said for Maoz’s film is that it is a tour de force that forcefully expresses what war is like for ordinary grunts who don’t want to do anything but get home as quickly as possible. There are reminders of the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, in that Lebanon also shows that being a soldier is a very nasty job. Only this time there are no heroes, only a group of frightened young men enclosed in what looks likely to be their iron grave.

Maoz’s, who drove a tank in Lebanon himself and still has nightmares about the conflict, shoots solely from inside the tank, with only a cranking view-finder showing what is happening outside. Throughout, sound is used as powerfully as the camera — the grinding noise of the tank’s engine and the useless crackle of the command radio adding to the sense that a tank is not a comfortable place to be at the best of times.

Lebanon delivers no comment on the conflict, yet it speaks eloquently of what war is really like on the ground — a scenario where, as often as not, nobody wins. Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen and Michael Moshonov could hardly be better among the cast. It is almost as if writer-director Maoz is reliving his own experiences.

Lebanon
Cert: 15

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