Beaufort doesn't retreat from war's futility.
Cognitive linguist George Lakoff has written extensively on the metaphor "power is up." That is, most languages have constructions such as, "I'm on top of the situation," "She is at the height of power," "He's in the upper echelon," etc. These non-conscious metaphors, it's theorized, arose historically through combat. For to be on top in a fight is generally superior, as is fighting from an elevated position, such as a hill.
***image1***
The powerful, 2008 Oscar-nominated war film
Beaufort
takes its title from the ancient fortress where it takes place. The fort has been a strategic position of height, and thus power, since prehistory. Its first known occupiers were the Crusaders in the 12th century, and it has since passed through the hands of the Knights Templar, the Ottomans, the Palestinian government and, from 1982 until 2000, the Israelis.
Beaufort
, which is semi-fictionalized, is adapted from a novel by Israeli writer Ron Leshem and set in the waning days of Israeli control over the fort. It is-rather originally for a war film-not about conquest, but about retreat.
Much of the action takes place in the labyrinthine, claustrophobic crawl spaces of the Israelis' fortified base, which was built alongside the ancient stone fort. These passageways bring to mind those of German submarine movie
Das Boot
or the foxholes of
Letters From Iwo Jima
-
Beaufort
's two closest war-film cousins. Here soldiers sleep, with their boots on, in steel cylinders. ***image2***They are so used to the daily routine of incoming artillery shells, they sleep while radio operators announce dryly over the loudspeaker, "incoming" and, after the missiles and mortars have exploded add, rather superfluously, "impact."
A few short clips from Israeli television make it clear that this war-as is so often the case-is a game of public perception played with human pawns by politicians on the board of global media. The fortress was drifting, symbolically, from a sight of heroism to one of futility and-Hezbollah wanted to assure-defeat. Moreover, the fort's multi-era architecture serves as a constant reminder of victory's transience and vanquishment's inevitably. The soldiers in
Beaufort
are hit, therefore, not only daily by Hezbollah mortars but also by nihilism, depression and despair.
The Israeli public must have shared these sentiments when
Beaufort
came to the theaters there, because just a month after shooting wrapped, war between Hezbollah and Israel erupted again. Still, the realistic, well-acted Israeli film never stoops to demonizing Hezbollah. It takes the high ground even as it cedes it.