ZephSilver

A gargantuan, freewheeling piece of avant-garde oscillating between meditative and lighthearted farce. Listless stream of consciousness that's often unsupported as it drifts into a stupor before snapping back into focus, lurching forward into a sequence of visual splendor to counterbalance its surrender into entropy. Many an experimental film cliche alongside flashes of brilliance. Trawling lush gardens, set to field recordings and voice notes. Dancing paper mâché cutouts and unused foley on a whim. Home movie detours, pantomiming, and God Krishna chants. Repurposed vacation footage and tinny folk song covers. Japanese taiko drummer audio hard-cut to stop motion juvenilia and poetry readings. Archive footage and outtakes; it's all here, happening, unorganized, landing where it may. All of this leads to the same conclusion that other proprietors of the arts have made: flora, fauna, and the human form are all you need to construct cinema. The rest is additive; here's quantifiable proof in a 10-hour canvas.

There is no greater point. No statement being positioned; dive in and lose yourself.

Defining the lyrical passages that ink the chapters of a life. Tidal locked between monochromatic tints of sepia and steel blue-of dreams and memories materialized to better grapple with the shifting sands of interpersonal relationships. Attempts to make sense of what's been scattered to the wind, to rationalize the resting resentment of feeling cast aside. Retracing one's footsteps, replaying key events as they crest and trough in the recesses of their mind. The cityscape is laid out with the earmarks of an M. C. Escher lithograph; each staircase and walkway offer no resistance, unfolding with ease to induce the wanderer into further introspection.

As comforting as it is to lounge back, cradled in the bosom of the past, it posits a new set of challenges for those who can't part from it. The intersecting lives of three brothers provide a panoramic view of its outcome. Their reliance manifests as a soothing balm, attempting to paper over the banal reality that sometimes, people grow up and grow apart. Searching for a tomorrow while keeping a tight grip on yesteryear can often leave one unstuck from the present, freefalling, getting further lost in thought of what had been. "If only I-" "I wish there was-" typifies fruitless attempts to mend perceived wrongs when time offers no redoes; there's only now and what's to come. It's in this form of denial that we carry a piece of our childhood with us. A preset naivety never to be shaken from its infancy, even when we've matured enough to know better.

And so three brothers, three limbs connected by blood, are drawn back to the roots of their father's garden, tracing the timeline, attempting to pinpoint the instance in which they branched out. Fighting the inevitability of parting ways misses the point of why it happened in the first place. Growing pains are necessary; the familiarity of a family's protection can often stunt the maturation that makes boys into men. It's hard to let go and trust that the wind will carry you where you need to land, that you'll find solid ground to build from, but the alternative is a sapling that never takes root.

We're all under the roof of the same sky. The seed for reconciliation may be further down one's path, and as long as you're moving forward, there's a chance it will bear fruit. A new day will crest the horizon; wake up and grab hold of it.

2009's Lebanon took what's arguably the most imposing land vehicle on the modern battlefield, a tank, and positioned it in a way where it's just another contraption to be shot and bombarded at by enemy fire, susceptible to the same kind of pending doom as the soldiers on foot that's taking cover around it. It manages to pull this off by encasing us in the metal tomb with its operating crew, a group of inexperienced soldiers just as nervous and unsure as the battlefield outside is hostile and unpredictable. By using the gunsight and rotating gun turret as our POV to the outside world, the entire thing creates anxiety-inducing claustrophobia, as each camera pan can bring us into view of the battlefield's horrors or witness an incoming attack being waged against its operators. This ingenious novelty sets Lebanon apart from other films in the war genre. It's like an involuntary amusement park ride from hell. Add to that the brutal, ugly approach to onscreen violence, with its frank depictions of realistically rendered sinew, spilled guts, and torn limbs, and you have a war film that captures the gruesomeness of what it's like when men actively seek the destruction of others. War's not pretty or sensationalistic; it's vile and amoral, and this film drives that point home.

To further strengthen the potency of its visceral evils, the film made the wise decision to make it about the increasing mental strains that come with continuous exposure to these conditions. War is a battle on two fronts: the enemy in front of you and the one in your head. Our nervous tank operators are shadowboxing, trying not to lose their wits lest they become like the many other men who return home suffering from extreme PTSD or shell shock. The pummeling sound design of the tank track pulverizing rubble or the deafening claps of concentrated gunfire, hearing men pleading or barking orders, overhead aircraft rocketing past, its deafening roar as it streaks through the sky; every bit of this environment over-stimulates the senses before numbing it entirely. The longer they're placed in this scenario, the further it chips away at their center. The depiction of mentality concerns doesn't just stop there either, as other key characters in the film are incorporated to allow us to explore the more frightening aspects of certain personality types.

For instance, the mission commander's pragmaticism and no-nonsense characteristics may make him an ideal candidate for leading the charge. Yet, at the same time, that also means he's untrustworthy when minimizing the casualties of bystanders who get in the unit's way. So much so that he explicitly tells his men how they'll have to refer to a specific weapon going forward to allow for plausible deniability as they're openly violating the Geneva Conventions. And even scarier still are those who make no qualms about killing and, in fact, relish it. Warzones serve as a breeding ground for blood-thirsty psychopaths to indulge in their sick games with impunity, and Ashraf Barhom's Phalangist character is a representation of that. His brief but essential introduction scene in the tank was incredible, demonstrating his front-facing social mask to newcomers before slightly removing it to see the monster beneath. He accomplishes his ruse by plying them with rations to lower their guard while, at the same time, subtly probing in an informal manner to see if any of them speak Arabic to assess how far he can divulge his desires to the would-be prisoner they've been made to take onboard the vessel. Once he sniffs out his answer, his twisted psychopathy surfaces with his switch in language, as his jovial English-speaking demeanor is tucked away the moment he kneels and chillingly whispers to the Syrian captive in his native Arabic tongue how he's going to torture, maim, and kill him-a truly bone-chilling interaction. It was sadistic, but appropriately so, as it sells the message of the larger dangers that are always around them, that too much trust in would-be allies can also get you killed.

Part of me would like to handwave this film as an Israeli apologist letter, hiding behind the self-critical anti-war art to give an out for their egregious war crimes then and now, but that would be disingenuous of me. At its core, the message is that everyone, regardless of ethnic background or position in these blood politics, suffers. The moment wielding a gun against your fellow man becomes your solution, you've lost. No one comes out of a war unscathed; no one.