美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Foxtrot,' A Filmmaker Captures The 'Bleeding Soul Of Israeli Society'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

"Foxtrot" is Israel's most celebrated 1 film of the year and perhaps its most controversial. It opens in theaters in the United States this weekend and tells the story of one family trying to grapple with the loss of their son at war. But it's also a searing critique of a society stuck in perpetual war. NPR's Bilal Qureshi has the story.

BILAL QURESHI, BYLINE 2: "Foxtrot" opens with uniformed soldiers arriving at the front door of an upscale Tel Aviv apartment.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOORBELL)

QURESHI: Actor Lior Ashkenazi plays the film's central character, a grieving father named Michael.

LIOR ASHKENAZI: This is the most fear of every parent in Israel when they send their children to the service - to hear the doorbell. Everybody's afraid of it.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FOXTROT")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking foreign language).

QURESHI: It's a fear born of experience in a country caught up in a seemingly unending dance with war - part of the reason for the film's title, says director Samuel Maoz.

SAMUEL MAOZ: "Foxtrot" deals with the open wound or bleeding soul of Israeli society. What a traumatic circle we are trapped in. I mean, we dance the foxtrot. Every generation tries to dance it differently, but like the foxtrot steps, we always end at the same starting point.

QURESHI: And his characters dance it onscreen.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FOXTROT")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking foreign language).

QURESHI: In one surreal scene at a remote Israeli checkpoint, code-named Foxtrot, an armed soldier dances with his rifle, twirling before he returns to the starting position.

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QURESHI: The film is a metaphor 4 for all wars, says journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer. She covered "Foxtrot" for the newspaper Haaretz. But she says it's also a story about the central role of the Israeli Defense 5 Forces.

ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER: Israel is a society in which, because of compulsory 6 military service, every layer of society is affected 7 by what happens in the IDF. Everyone from the highest classes to the lowest classes has this universal experience. And if you have a unique community in Israel of artists who have served in the military, have sent their children to the army, that is going to be, you know, very rich material to sort of explore creatively and very critically what happens.

QURESHI: Before Samuel Maoz became a filmmaker, he was a tank gunner and fought in Israel's first war in Lebanon in 1982. Maoz came home from that conflict with severe PTSD, and it inspired his acclaimed 8 debut 9 film, "Lebanon." He says his trauma 3 was inseparable from that of the preceding generation of Holocaust 10 survivors 11.

MAOZ: My generation - our, let's say, main problem was that we couldn't complain about anything. I mean, our parents, our teachers, obviously survived the most horrible trauma in the modern times and were naturally not very stable. When I, when we came back from war, we had two hands, two legs, 10 fingers without any burning marks on our skin. Complaining that we feel hurt inside us was unacceptable. I mean, overcome. Be a man. We survived the Holocaust.

QURESHI: Actor Lior Ashkenazi says successful, high-functioning Israelis like his character didn't talk about their experiences.

ASHKENAZI: They have the best family you could have, the best life you could have. But deep inside, they are - there's a word for it in Hebrew - it's srita. They have a scratch in their soul.

QURESHI: As his character struggles with the fate of his son, the scene shifts to the young man at his desolate 12 border checkpoint. One night, in a moment of panic, he opens fire on a car full of Palestinians, killing 13 them all.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FOXTROT")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, speaking foreign language).

(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)

SOMMER: It's a really dark moment, but it's sort of, you know, in the classic tradition of war films.

QURESHI: Journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer.

SOMMER: You've got very confused and immature 14 18- and 19-year-olds making these sort of tragically 15 fateful decisions. And Israelis see them, you know, as their 18- and 19-year-old kids who, in other circumstances, would be freshmen 16 figuring things out on a college campus. And instead, they're making life-and-death calls in a terrible conflict.

QURESHI: It's that scene that led Israel's culture minister, Miri Regev, to lash 17 out against the filmmaker.

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MIRI REGEV: (Through interpreter) You know Israel, you know the Israeli army, and you know how moral it is. And you dare to present Israeli soldiers killing Arabs at a checkpoint and then burying them, and you call this horrendous 18 lie a metaphor.

QURESHI: Following the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the culture minister questioned the loyalty 19 of director Samuel Maoz.

MAOZ: The fact that I fought in bloody 20 battles and paid a heavy price has no public value anymore. I'm a traitor 21 because my culture minister announced, without seeing the film, that the film defames the IDF. And she incited 22 the large public who has not seen the film and consider me as a traitor.

QURESHI: Despite the controversy 23, "Foxtrot" was Israel's entry to the Oscars. It wasn't nominated, but Samuel Maoz says he didn't make the film for global awards. It's his contribution to his country's future.

MAOZ: Our mistakes are the failures of our children. And I really believe that every human society should strive to be better. And the basic and necessary condition for improvement is the ability to accept self-criticism. But when self-criticism is marketed to the people as a betrayal and the critics considered to be traitors 24, you have no chance of rising. So if I criticize the place I live, I do it because I worry. I do it because I want to protect it, and I do it from love.

QURESHI: And Samuel Maoz says he did his "Foxtrot" to keep another generation from becoming stuck in the same dance. Bilal Qureshi, NPR News.