American war films often
include a scene in which a fresh-faced recruit reports for duty and learns the
unwritten rules of his new post, whether it's in Western Europe, Vietnam, or
elsewhere. The unacknowledged irony of those movies is that the soldiers giving
the lectures usually haven't been there much longer than the rookies. Prior to
the current conflict, the U.S. approach to military campaigns involved a lot of
moving around, to the extent that it would be hard for any movie soldier to
speak authoritatively about "the way we do things" in the place he's stationed.
Chances are, no one's been there long enough to establish any traditions.
The Israeli Defense
Forces, on the other hand, did occupy Lebanon's Beaufort Castle from 1982 to
2000, and one of the fascinations of Joseph Cedar's Israeli war film Beaufort is the way characters
pass on what's been learned over 18 years of skirmishes and drudgery. "That's
how you sleep at Beaufort," one explains to a newbie, while another offers to
cook up "a Beaufort toast," a grubby little late-night snack. Yet in Cedar's
film—based on a Ron Leshem novel—there's a trace of wistfulness to
the way stories and methods are passed on. When the movie begins, the army is
weeks away from withdrawing, and while everybody knows evacuation is
inevitable, nobody wants to talk about it. Meanwhile, the days pass slowly,
with the tedium interrupted by the occasional landmine or Hezbollah mortar
attack.
Beaufort isn't really an action
movie, though it contains some tense combat scenes and tough-talking speeches,
and it isn't really an art film, though Cedar keeps the pace slow and lingers
on the differences between the cramped spaces inside the castle and the vast landscapes
outside. Mostly, Beaufort is a deliberate, reserved dramatization of how an
army stands down. The movie could use some "why" to go with that "how," but
there's still a lot of poignancy to the scenes where the IDF prepares to leave
by trashing the place that had been their home for two decades—and a
Middle Eastern battlement since the 12th century. There's also a little bit in Beaufort about how a long-term
occupation loses track of its original purpose. "It's a well-known phenomenon,"
one soldier says to another, while staring out a gorgeous mountain vista. "When
you're here long enough, the view changes."