Review of Foxtrot (2017) by Bertaut1 — 15 Mar 2019

A fascinating political allegory.

Part satirical allegory, part surrealist indictment, Foxtrot finds writer/director Samuel Maoz working with similar themes as he did in Lebanon (2009), especially the ridiculous nature of war and the meaninglessness of giving one's life in the service of one's country. However, whereas Lebanon was set entirely in a Centurion tank, Foxtrot expands Moaz's thematic concerns to take in the grief and anguish of those who have lost children to military service. Much like Lebanon, Foxtrot is an intensely political film, and much like Lebanon, it has met with controversy in Israel, where it has been accused of slandering the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As aesthetically impressive as it is politically divisive, the film is a savage condemnation of both a national psyche and a military mindset that trades on the most binary of them-versus-us dichotomies.

Divided into three distinct sections, the film tells the story of Michael Feldman (a superb Lior Ashkenazi), who learns that his son Jonathan, a conscript in the IDF, has been killed "in the line of duty", only to learn several hours later that a mistake had been made and Jonathan is alive and well. The film then jumps several days back to a forlorn desert checkpoint on Israel's northern border (codename Foxtrot) manned by a group of wet-behind-the-ears soldiers, including Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray). The most action the group see is raising the barrier to let a camel amble through and checking the IDs of the few Palestinians who pass by. Without spoiling anything, the third section, which is kind of an extended coda, then returns to the Feldman apartment six months after the opening scenes.

In Foxtrot, Maoz uses allegory to deconstruct Israeli national myths. Interrogating what he sees as a culture of denial born from a reluctance to deal with the morality and sustainability of being an occupying force, the film gets a lot of mileage out of the metaphor of the foxtrot - a dance where no matter where you go, if you follow the steps correctly, you end up back at the starting point. Maoz is suggesting that without taking great care, countries will repeat the errors of the past, ending up exactly where they once were. Speaking to the Globe and Mail, Maoz explains, "Foxtrot deals with the open wound or bleeding soul of Israeli society. We dance the foxtrot; each generation tries to dance it differently but we all end up at the same starting point.".

In a more concrete sense, in a scene at Foxtrot, the film examines the casual sadism and unspoken racism that can arise from serving in the armed forces of a country perpetually at war. Making a Palestinian couple stand in the pouring rain whilst their antiquated computer checks the couple's IDs, the soldiers don't care that they couple are dressed for a formal night, or that by the time they are cleared, their clothes are destroyed, as is her hair, and makeup. The scene is brilliantly staged, agonisingly realistic, and takes place in real-time, with Maoz concentrating on the couple looking at one another across the roof of the car, conveying agonised helplessness, compromised innocence, and, most saliently, abject humiliation. It's a masterclass in dialogue-free storytelling, and deeply political storytelling at that.

Aesthetically, Maoz shoots each of the three sections differently; the first is restrictive, trapping us in the confined headspace of the Feldmans, with the intense emotionality constantly threatening to boil over; the vast wide-open vistas of the second part contrast sharply with the confinement of the first, with the entire section threaded through with surrealism; the third section is darker than the others (in a literal sense), with a stark visual design that emphasises only those elements that are important to the scene. The Feldman apartment itself is extremely angular, and although it's very spacious, cinematographer Giora Bejach shoots it in such a way as to appear oppressively box-like.

Foxtrot won't be for everyone. Some will take issue with the pacing (which, it has to be said, is extremely languid), some with the allegorical nature of the story, some with the film's politics. For everyone else, however, this is a brilliantly realised tragedy, dealing with the randomness of pain and loss in a country refusing to recognise its past. Critiquing the xenophobic mindset that has crept into the Israeli zeitgeist, Maoz has been accused of making an "anti-Israel narrative." On the contrary, he is pleading with his country to change its ways, or it will repeat the errors of history. This is the act of a man who loves his country deeply, but who can see its flaws.