Lebanon

Directed by Samuel Maoz

(R)

****

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This debut from Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz is a “wrenching condemnation of war,” said Deborah Young in The Hollywood Reporter. Lebanon chronicles Israel’s 1982 invasion of that country, as seen from the “claustrophobic confines of an armored tank.” This immersive approach creates an unrelenting simulation of the Israeli soldiers’ experience: You can almost smell the blood, sweat, and fumes. Like last year’s The Hurt Locker, the film eschews political commentary about war and instead “dramatizes the moral confusion of combat with unusual clarity and force,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. This is an “intensely personal” film for Maoz, who was a gunner in one of the first tanks to cross into Lebanon. In the “precision of its psychological portraiture and, above all, in its uncompromising moral seriousness,” Lebanon sets a standard few other war movies can match. Maoz’s harrowing work is “not just an impressive first feature,” said J. Hoberman in The Village Voice. It’s a tour de force, and the best film I’ve seen this year.