A soldier’s distraught parents must simultaneously come to terms with their son’s death and the frailties of their marriage in writer-director Samuel Maoz’s anti-war drama, nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. All the sudden bursts of absurdity — an unfrequented military checkpoint where languorous camels outnumber vehicles, a slowly-shifting cargo container out of which our soldier operates, and the constant threat of commandos breaking into a mambo — can’t help to disguise the fact that audiences can only take so much suffering. This is made even more oppressive by the director’s choice to continually filter the anguish through a closeup lens. With a climactic twist ending that shatters, rather than justifies the means used to achieve it, the best thing to be said of this well-intentioned film is that it doesn’t resort to lecturing. With: Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, and Yonaton Shiray. (2018) — Scott Marks
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