Kippur (2000)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Blistering performances.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This movie stunk. Scenes that go on and on without any life to it. The first ten minutes shows a couple making love, covered in paint on an art canvas. There is a man walking on an empty street and it goes on and on. Two lost soldiers are driving around for fifteen minutes trying to find their unit. Boring and dull. As for the biggest invasion in Israeli history, no one seems organized or even worried for that matter. The soldiers are not wearing combat helmets in a war zone and come across as dumb and dumber. As for the conversations, they are dull and listless, void of any emotion. Honestly, I found this whole movie unrealistic and totally boring. There isn't any type of character development and the viewer has no connection to any of the characters in the movie. I was hoping for a great film, but all I got was a snore bore. I give it a three only because of some effort from the main two characters. Don't waste your time on this junk.

A docudrama about two young Israeli men who help evacuate the wounded from the battlefield and at the end are themselves hurt when their helicopter is downed.That's about it for the plot.The film is aesthetically ambitious though. It thrives on its imagery. I haven't seen so many looooong and static shots since Hitchcock's experiments in the late 1940s. Even Ozu would be weirded out by these exhausting scenes during which, for most of the time, nothing much is happening. Men shout over the noise of the battlefield and slog through the mud from one place to another place that's ten feet away. Even after the credits, when we see a man and woman rolling around and having sex on a bed splashed with paints of different colors, the scene goes on and on and on while a saxophone ululates a little mournfully behind them. It's no more erotic than the shifting textures of the loving couple in "Hiroshima, mon Amour." A bit of the background of the two men is sketched in, but not much, so we can't really identify with them. The only other soldier I was able to distinguish was the doctor, and that was because he looked like Francis Ford Coppola.There are absolutely no clichés to be found. They're fighting the Syrians but we never see any, and the enemy is mentioned only once or twice, and then matter-of-factly, not with bitterness or hatred. There is virtually no banter between the men, the kind that we've become so used to. No jokes. No mail call. Just a winter landscape that is foggy, cold, muddy, and altogether inhospitable. Most of us, when we think of Israel, that lonesome Western outlier, think of it as it is during the tourist season, all sunshine and golden grass. But in winter, Mediterranean climates can be as miserable as anywhere else, as any good Californian can tell you.Speaking of the Mediterranean -- and I'm glad you brought it up -- the film gives us a fairly clear picture of citizens in the Circum-Mediterranean cultural region at war. Here are these Jews running around, shouting and waving their hands and arguing, while the helicopters put-put-put ear-splittingly next to them and the tanks rumble past like diesel trucks. (On the other side, the Syrians are undoubtedly doing the same.) This is 1967 and the men are sloppy and long-haired, and they're good warriors all. What would General Patton with his spit-and-polish have made of this? Most impressive scene. The two men arrive late at a briefing before going to the front. The officer in charge is a bit irritated and asks one of them what he can contribute to the effort now underway. The man gets to his feet, looking a little shy, and says weakly, "Well, we've been trained for this duty. If we have a pilot and another man we will do the job perfectly." Something like that. His demeanor is completely at odds with his confident reply.It's by no means an uninteresting movie. It's just that the director and the editor overreached themselves and have slowed the tempo down to a funereal pace. There were times when I found myself hoping that the mail call cliché would take place so the men could read letters from their sweethearts back home and joke with one another.

Kippur (2000) Directed by Amos Gitai Starring: Liron Levo, Tomer Russo, Uri Klausner, Yoram Hattab, and Guy Amir ***1/2 out of 5 starsForgive me if I see the good in everything, but I believe that this Israel film, which features excruciatingly long takes and little dialogue, DOES have some deep significance. However, the long takes ARE draining, yet when you realize the purpose, it all seems to make sense.Based on Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai's personal experiences in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, in which Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel on their holy day of Yom Kippur, "Kippur" follows a search and rescue team of four people as they travel by helicopter to different war-torn areas to find as many people alive as possible and bring them to some sort of safety and medical treatment. The film begins with two characters, Ruso (Yes, Russo) and Weinraub (Levo), who find themselves abruptly trying to get into a war. One of the characters (Ruso, I believe) is eager to get to the battlefront, proclaiming that a war has finally reached their generation and that "it is ours!". You must understand that Israel has been going through a war at least once, if not twice a decade. So, war, to the naive, inexperience individual, seems like a rite of passage.Ruso and Weinraub, after awkwardly entering the front lines and being told to go back as shells are heard closeby, stop on the side and meet up with Gadassi (Amir), a medical officer trying to find a ride to the mission briefing. When they finally get to the battlefield to start the search and rescue, you soon find out that the film is about the death, detachment, and irrationality of war. What began as a rite of passage for the characters ended up being a strange, tortured nightmare. They go from area to area finding amputees and dead soldiers, usually unable to help all and having to leave much of the bodies on the battlefield. One torturous take follows the four characters as they try to help a soldier, who is hurt and obviously alive, out of a big field of mud. As they fall and slip, the soldier's body is thrown around, unintentionally carelessly. The frustration takes over one of the soldiers helping him as he breaks down in the middle of the mud and the doctor is going back and forth trying to calm the panicking soldier and help the injured one. When they finally make it to some other officers waiting for them to take the soldier away, he is already dead and the helplessness on the soldier's muddy faces says it all.This film can be and will be very draining for most viewers. The long takes and the often far away framing distances ourselves from the action and you should soon learn to explore and examine what Gitai is trying to convey through the characters' stories. The film DOES build up to a briefly explosive climax, which poetically brings everything full circle for the soldiers. "Kippur" is a difficult film appropriate for its difficult subject. It is also daring, unwavering in its message, and, most importantly, truthful to the nonsense that war really is.

When I screened Kippur, I was very enthusiastic. I had waited a long time to finally be able to see it.Huge disappointment.There is no story line. No acting. No directing. No Camera work. Nothing with the exception of a constant annoying helicopter hummer and the never-ending noise of a diesel engine.Save time. Avoid the movie.