Three for one

The highly acclaimed Israeli film Foxtrot follows a soldier through his seemingly safe active duty. where you started.) Months have passed, Jonathan’s birthday has come round, and the grieving parents are engaged in their own uneasy dance of recrimination and remembrance.

Maoz favours long takes and overhead shots, which register very differently depending on the prevailing mood. Looking down on Michael in his grief, the camera’s twisting motion accentuates his reeling steps, as if forcing him to stagger. Later, a God’seye view seems almost accusatory, after a misunderstanding in the desert spirals into tragedy. (The scariest thing about this is that the military seems to have procedures in place to deal with precisely this it-should-never-havehappened calamity.)

Foxtrot is a story that can glide from heartbreak to humour and back again in a heartbeat, but the hand of the director is so steady, it feels inevitable. There are moments of supreme beauty and sadness, as when the family dog shyly approaches Michael in what looks to be a mix of supplication and condolence. And there are bits of laugh-out-loud satire, like the military’s obsessive desire that Michael remain adequately hydrated in his grief, echoed when Dafna giggles at the absurdity of refreshments being served at a memorial.

There’s even a subtle subtheme about how we use art and storytelling as ways of coping with death and making sense of life. It feels clunky to say it in a review, given that Foxtrot does such a perfect job of showing it on the screen. This is a movie that invites but ultimately transcends analysis, delivering its final, poignant emotional punch directly to the soul.