Lebanon: The War Seen Through the Crosshairs

At the 66th Venice Film Festival, Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz achieved a significant milestone by winning the Golden Lion Award for Best Film with his debut feature, 'Lebanon.'

Samuel Maoz, a relatively new face in the international film scene, hails from Tel Aviv, Israel. He developed a deep passion for cinema early on, directing more than ten experimental short films by 18 years of age. In 1982, during the Fifth Middle East War outbreak, Samuel Maoz answered the call to serve, becoming a tank gunner and enduring the horrors of warfare in Lebanon. After the war, he returned to civilian life and pursued a degree in film studies at an Israeli university.

However, the tranquility of post-war life couldn't heal the emotional scars he had acquired on the battlefield. Samuel Maoz embarked on the ambitious journey of translating his wartime experiences into a film, beginning with the screenplay. Yet, haunting memories consistently interrupted his creative process. He once confessed, 'Each time I put pen to paper, I could almost smell the burning of human flesh,' making it nearly impossible to proceed until he resolved to confront these demons head-on. He declared, 'I must find a way to convey that essence,' eventually completing the film in 2009.

The film is an adaptation of his war experiences, deeply intertwined with his life story. During interviews, Samuel Maoz firmly rejected categorizing his work as a 'war film.' He insisted, 'The film captures my personal narrative and my journey of personal growth.' Indeed, this film stands apart from traditional war movies, devoid of heroics and valor; through the lens of a tank gunner, it offers a glimpse into the soldier’s anxious world.

1. The Repressive Atmosphere within the Confined Space

When Samuel Maoz discussed this film, he expressed his desire to offer a unique perspective that would evoke emotional experiences in the audience. This led him to choose an unconventional point of view, depicting the war through the tank's gun sight. He aimed to make viewers feel as if they were inside the tank, rather than just observers, and to experience the emotional tension of the characters. This choice sets the film's tone, where the audience is compelled to adopt the director's perspective within a cramped space, allowing them to experience the emotional intensity firsthand. The fear and panic experienced in battle are often hard to grasp, but the director, through skillful scene management, enables viewers to sense the fear and despair of war.

This fear and repression don't just stem from the confined space but also from tense interpersonal relationships. In war-themed movies, the emotional bonds among comrades are often a central focus. However, in "Lebanon," the camaraderie among the tank crew members is deliberately downplayed. When the four crew members first meet and introduce themselves, the loader, Hertzel, shows disdain for the others and refuses to carry out the patrol mission assigned by the commander, Assi. This leads to intense conflicts between Assi and Hertzel, adding significant tension to the tight space. These four men, who should be united, act individually and are bewildered about handling an uncertain future. Each has unresolved personal issues, and their reactions to the situation are often inadequate. This portrayal makes the film stand out; it lacks the heroism and grandeur often found in war movies. Instead, it depicts four ordinary young men thrust into war, struggling and confused. They lack the sense of duty, honor, and patriotic fervor often associated with wartime heroes and are driven by fear and a desire to survive. Their mutual blame, accusations, and arguments create an even tenser and more anxious atmosphere, reflecting war's psychological toll on humans.

The limited narrative perspective through the scope's crosshairs reveals hidden external dangers. The tank's crew members are enclosed in steel and confined to a cramped space. Their view of the outside world is limited to what they can see through the scope's crosshairs. This restricted field of vision adds to their sense of helplessness. They can't comprehend everything around them without a complete perspective, thus intensifying their fear. The oppressive mood throughout the film is perpetuated by the confined space and limited view, reflecting the profound experiences of the director with war. The director’s focus on the confined space and restricted perspective effectively conveys the sense of oppression brought by war. However, the director’s emotions may be too pronounced, so the film’s perspective on war also carries a personal touch.

2. The Expression of Ethical Contradictions in War

Director Michael Cimino of ‘The Deer Hunter’ once stated that a good war-themed movie must inherently be anti-war,’ and ‘Lebanon’ adheres to this sentiment. However, this film takes a different approach compared to conventional anti-war movies. Instead of providing a broad, macroscopic portrayal of war’s destructiveness to negatively affect the audience’s perception of war, it attempts to delve into the personal experiences within the war. It seeks to illustrate that ‘war is a devilish force that can awaken the inner demons within us.’ The film encapsulates the inherent contradiction in the ethics of war, delving into the inner turmoil of those who perpetrate violence in times of conflict.

Not every soldier is naturally inclined towards bloodlust. Their first experiences with taking lives in war often result in a harrowing process. The director vividly depicts the profound moral dilemmas that ordinary soldiers face when making difficult choices on the battlefield. Shmulik, a machine gunner, hesitates when he faces the enemy for the first time. Through his scope, he sees a young man who is equally terrified and anxious, causing him to refrain from pulling the trigger. In that moment, all he sees is a fellow human being, not a mere target. It is the innate goodness in his humanity that prevents him from extinguishing the life of a stranger. Yet, this hesitation leads to the death of his comrades at the hands of the enemy. Through his scope, Shmulik witnesses the deaths of his comrades, marking the first intrusion of the corrosive influence of war into his soul. He is compelled to accept a brutal ethical reality of war: a ‘kill or be killed’ situation.

Consequently, when facing the Lebanese, Shmulik pulls the trigger amidst internal turmoil, only to unintentionally strike down an elderly chicken farmer, who lies on the ground with blood and gore, crying out for ‘peace.’ In the name of self-defense, the commanding officer unflinchingly eliminates him. As noted by Neil J. Smelser when studying the factors that drive destructive behavior, ‘The pathological evil of the evil-doer is, however, always masked by an overt good.’ Shmulik and his comrades might not qualify as inherently evil. Still, their fear-induced and survival-driven acts of violence have already revealed a glimpse of the ‘inner demons’ that the director spoke of.

Nevertheless, soldiers like Shmulik seem to grapple with the anguish of such killings. After carrying his fallen comrade’s body outside, he frantically wipes away the blood on his hands. The death of his comrade burdens him with deep guilt.To some extent, he seems to become a double murderer: his hesitation results in his comrade’s sacrifice, and his decision leads to the death of civilians. Regardless of the choices he makes inside the tank, the ultimate outcome results in the death of others. These soldiers are inevitably compelled to suppress their moral compass in such an absurd predicament. Over time, war progressively distorts the souls of these soldiers, rendering them into instruments of death.

Once soldiers internalize the so-called ‘war ethics,’ the destruction they inflict becomes terrifying. Another Israeli director, Ari Folman, has depicted the story of the ‘Sabra and Shatila Massacre’ in this war in his film ‘Waltz with Bashir,’ revealing the ignominious episodes of the Israeli army during this conflict. Samuel Maoz confessed during interviews, ‘I cannot absolve myself of responsibility,’ thus, in his film, he unflinchingly reveals the atrocities committed by the Israeli side during the war. In the movie, Commander Jamil repeatedly underscores when assigning tasks, ‘Our bombers have already leveled it.’ Within this seemingly mundane statement lie unspeakable acts. Through the lens of the scope and through close-ups, the director meticulously reproduces these gruesome scenes. The horrors stripped of their background become harrowing to behold. When Shmulik and his team steer the tank into the city, the entire urban landscape has become a nightmarish wasteland, strewn with rubble and lifeless corpses. An overturned and wounded donkey appears especially pitiful and horrifying. In close-up shots, the creature breathes heavily and desperately, tears welling in its eyes. This portrayal seems to confirm a quote by Churchill: 'Modern war accumulates tremendous kinetic energy, reducing humans to victims of machines, and slaughter becomes an industry, no different from the slaughterhouses in Chicago.' War has become a stark act of plunder against life.

Shmulik and his comrades seem to bear a sense of guilt for their own deeds. They are confronted with the resentful gazes of the surviving locals. The director reinforces this effect with three consecutive close-up shots in the film. The first features an elderly man sitting beside a corpse, the second a terrified child, and the third a mother who has lost all her family. Despite their differences in age and gender, their expressions of fear, anger, and helplessness are strikingly similar. Their gaze into the camera seems to interrogate the souls of every soldier on the battlefield, transforming these eyes of resentment into a poignant emotional reflection of the Middle East's turbulent reality. Of course, these helpless civilians may not know that the soldiers inside the tank's steel shell are equally terrified. As the director remarked, they seem to be simply 'trying to survive, trying to escape from this environment, firing relentlessly from within the tank.'

This narrative approach becomes strikingly pronounced in the latter part of the movie. Shmulik and his team unintentionally cross into an area controlled by the Syrians. Their identity appears to shift from being invaders to becoming besieged, making them the weaker party in this war, thus providing ample justification for their relentless firepower, even including the use of internationally banned white phosphorus shells. The mantra becomes, 'We are acting in self-defense, driven by our instinct to survive.' As a result, the movie creates a paradoxical scenario: whether it's the Lebanese civilians or the invading Israeli soldiers, it seems that all are victims of the war. This inevitably leads to a sense of bewilderment as to whom the true burden of responsibility for all the bloodshed and brutality on the battlefield falls. The question remains - where does Samuel Maoz find a way to seek redemption for his soul?

3. The Connection Between Film and Reality

Although Samuel Maoz has repeatedly stated that he lacks "strong political inclinations" and that this film is merely "raw material of history," as Edward Said noted in "Culture and Imperialism," "I do not think authors are mechanically the product of ideology, class, or the economic structure, but I do believe that they are situated at a certain point in their social history and that they do shape it, to varying degrees, and are shaped by it." This implies that interpreting this film without considering social reality would be biased. To objectively assess this film, one must consider the social context.

The movie depicts the events of the Fifth Middle East War, which occurred on June 6, 1982. Under the pretext of the assassination of its ambassador in the UK, Israel mobilized over 100,000 army, navy, and air force personnel. It launched a large-scale invasion of Lebanon, quickly occupying a significant portion of the country. This invasion of a foreign capital to defend one's territory is undoubtedly an act of aggression. However, the film doesn't provide historical context at the outset; it merely tells the story of a military operation, focusing on the moral dilemmas that seem typical of any war. Perhaps the director assumed the historical facts were widely known and didn't require extensive explanation. However, imagine someone entirely ignorant of this historical period watching the film; they might have an altogether different viewing experience. They might focus solely on the abstract moral judgments of war while ignoring the culpability of those who initiated the conflict. This illustrates the delicate balance between art and reality in this film.

Samuel Maoz appears to overly emphasize personal war experiences. It's akin to using the sniper's view in the film – a narrow perspective that limits his ability to grasp the full scope of war, leaving him to explore only an individualized understanding of war. Moreover, this war experience often appears, as British historian Joanna Bourke discusses in "An Intimate History of Killing," as a means for soldiers to absolve themselves of battlefield atrocities by attributing their actions to "obedience" and "environmental pressures." Maoz might not have intended this, but by downplaying the invasion's aggressive nature and focusing exclusively on the devastation of war on human nature, he limits the film's depth of reflection. The relationship between artistic representation and historical reality is never perfect equivalence, and "Lebanon" ultimately manifests as a personal war seen through the crosshairs.