Review by Gorrman Lee.

Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, which won the Best Director Award at the Berlin Film Festival, tells the true story of a 22-year-old Israeli military outpost in the heart of Lebanon. The outpost, called Beaufort, symbolizes Israeli control, and the soldiers who died to create it. The film focuses on Commander Liraz Liberti and the troops stationed to defend Beaufort from Hezbollah in the days leading up to Israel’s decision to dismantle Beaufort altogether and withdraw from their 18-year occupation of Lebanon.

Beaufort is a war film that, like many recent films, is actually anti-war. We never see the opposing Hezbollah soldiers; we only hear and see the impacts of the constant artillery shelling upon Beaufort. We never see great heroism, only tragic deaths that serve no purpose and gain no ground. Not a single gun is fired, and not a single Hezbollah soldier is killed in this film. Instead, Beaufort is about the futility of war. Why must Commander Liraz sacrifice the lives of his men, and his own belief in the military, to defend an outpost that the Israeli Defense Force will destroy in a matter of days?

The film is beautiful in its honesty, and in the care that the director took to depict these events. It is meticulously acted and photographed, and the few action sequences are dripping with tension and atmosphere. What we are treated to in Beaufort is not heroism, or the bond between soldiers; instead, the film is simply about feeling lost in events beyond our control. It is about great sacrifice for absolutely nothing.

Beaufort
Joseph Cedar | Israel | 2007 | 125min

Sat. Sept. 29 | 9:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Sun. Sept. 30 | 9:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre
Mon. Oct. 1 | 1:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre