Foxtrot (2017 Israel)

Director: Samuel Maoz
Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, Yonaton Shiray
Genre: Drama
Duration: 114 mins
Rated R

Samuel Maoz’s Israeli drama on the complexities of war is wilfully confusing, emotionally chaotic, and occasionally anarchic. Not content to merely confront the unspeakable grief of parents who lose a child, Maoz uses the film’s tripartite structure to encompass a devastating litany of Israeli attributes that run the gamut from machismo to racism to a past subverted by the Holocaust and then back again to grief. Each of the three parts is stylistically and tonally distinct. The first throws you into a hothouse intensity that’s wrenching to watch; the second has a hyper realistic, comical surrealism recalling the sharply composed tableaux of Israeli photographer Adi Nes; while the third feels as if Maoz doesn’t quite know how to end things. By the final frames, however, that last impression is laid to rest with a quiet and devastating sense of cruel futility.