DVDs in Review

Lebanon (Samuel Maoz, 2009)

Title: Lebanon (Samuel Maoz, 2009)

Release date: August 23 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD, Blu-ray

DVD RRP: £15.99

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Lebanon takes place mainly in one location – a cramped, threatened tank. Its four characters struggle to fit in this claustrophobic setting, but being comfortable in this situation is something the film’s director knows something about.

The writer and director of this project is Samuel Maoz, who, at 20 years old, served as an Israeli tank gunner during the controversial invasion of Lebanon in 1982. His experiences trapped inside the proverbial belly of the beast shape this film, but not broadly; everything is economical, flecked with sharp edges and tight construction.

It’s less than an hour-and-a-half-long, and our attention is forced to stay with the commander, gunner, loader and driver. To see outside, Maoz doesn’t grant us the luxury of establishing shots or tracking cameras – it’s all through the sights of the gun.

Inside, the floor is drenched in oil, water, urine, rations and spent shells while its four protagonists are pasted in sweat, racked with fear and plagued by the consequences of their actions or, as is painfully the case, their lack of action when the time comes. The tension becomes almost unbearable.

A lot of the release hype likens this to Kathryn Bigelow’s (fantastic) ‘The Hurt Locker’, and while ‘Lebanon’ is just as tense and well directed, scripted and acted, it’s a different animal. ‘The Hurt Locker’ was expansive, bridged with hopelessly overexposed shots of burning deserts. You could go crazy in the heat, if you didn’t get taken out by a sniper. ‘Lebanon’ internalises these fears of losing identity and life.

As a result of the cramped conditions, small cast and static location, ‘Lebanon’ is obviously the cheaper film and hardest to penetrate, but above all else it’s a fascinating internal portrait of war, brimming with taut metaphors and a relentlessly jagged atmosphere.