Customer Reviews

Kippur

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

An amazing film. I've served in both the U.S. and Israeli militaries, and seen combat in both. This is the closest thing to reality I've ever seen in a film.

The confusion of the Yom Kippur War is legendary. I lost my brother and his wife during the first few days. This film is hard to watch, seeing the Israeli military of which I am so proud, struggle and stagger under hammer blows from Syria and Egypt. The traffic jams of civilians and military mixed up in complete confusion. The radio playing urgent announcements set to martial music followed by tapioca pop music. The newspaper announcements casually announcing cancellations of graduations and excursions, along with "Be strong and courageous" exhortations.

To anyone expecting a Hollywood "guts and glory film", or a peacenik "all soul searching and folly of war" story, go elsewhere - but it is YOU who SHOULD see this film. No epic battle scenes set to stirring music. The war is in the background yet all around. This is the war a foot soldier sees. Confusion, tedium, sadness, friendship... The scene in the mud is devastatingly gruelling - sorry Hollywood movie lovers, you're not going to see the hero, just finished reading a love letter from his sweetheart grabbing a wounded man and carrying him out single handed. No. Four burly men, stuck in an impossible situation, struggling to get one man out. The end of the scene is devastating, and the actors convey just how hopeless their characters feel. The scenes of fields torn to shreds by tanks, no apparent reason or order in the trails, is stunning.

There are so many amazing scenes in this film. The stark reality is brutal and pitiless. The helicopter crash landing is handled in a perfect way - no explosions and heroics, just men struggling to survive. As in real life, the survivors are not jumping into action, nor is there one hero who takes charge. They are stunned and hurt, the world stands still.

This film is a must see. This film is Israel. There is no bravado or flag waving, no depictions of "evil Arabs" (in one scene, the characters are looking at a newspaper, and grow quiet upon seeing a photo of a captured Syrian). Neither is there any scene of "evil Israelis" trying to oppress anyone or using dirty tricks. It is a depiction of a country at war, no marches, no speeches. A wounded pilot saying he wants to be with his mother. Two soldiers talking, and one saying "Here I was going to say I miss my girlfriend, and you've just told me about your mother and the Nazis". This is Israel. No miracles, paperwork in a hospital. No charges up hills, just confusion on a road. Used Fiats and soldiers grumbling about officers behind their backs.

I was not prepared for this movie. It was completely NOT what I was expecting. It is War As It Is. It is Israel. It is humanity.

"Kippur" is not your typical war movie. There are no heroes - just two reservists who get swept up in the backwash of the 1973 Yom Kippur war while looking for their already mobilized and departed unit. It is like one of those nightmares where you know you have to be somewhere to take an exam/go to an interview/go to work, and somehow, you just can't get there.

Kippur tells us almost nothing about the details of the 1973 campaign (which Israel, surprised, came fairly close to losing, since it is really after conveying the sheer randomness and chaos of war from the worm's eye point of view. Unlike our modern Iraq adventures, it is likely the average grunt knew very little about what was happening in the next town or valley, or whether the war was being own or lost. The persepctive was interesting to someone raised with the media-enhanced viewpoint, after the 1967 war, that the Israeli military ran like a Swiss watch. In "Kippur", we learn that like our own army mired in Iraq, these are just weekend soldiers trying to get by.

This is a European-flavoured film, so it is bookended by equally dreamlike sex scenes ("Thin Red Line" tried this in a tamer way) which makes the movies' R-rating well deserved.

KIPPUR is a great film that is bound to get a negative response from general American audiences that are too used to the narrative cliques, characters, scenarios and general plot devises that have become the prerequisite elements in American war films of the past several decades(i.e. fast and disorienting battle scenes cut with slow metaphorical dramatic moments and flashback sequences). KIPPUR intellingently avoids these things NOT just for the sake of being different or to bore or annoy the audience but to show that the particular war being portrayed is an entirely different one altogether. What KIPPUR has accomplished through it's one-day time frame and linear narrative is the banality and monotany of a conflict like this. A war that seems almost like a dream to its inhabitants(the films moody slow jazz score contributes to this feel). The two main characters at the beginning of the film are literally "driving" to war, shooting the breeze as if going to a regular day of work. Here is a conflict that has dragged on for so long, that is has become engraved in the very culture and everyday routines of its people. You can see it in the faces of emotionally repressed men who have become desensitized to the violence and only become distraught when their initial defenses are broken down. The long take of the soldiers dragging and dropping the injured through the mud culminating in the weaping and arguing of the men clearly conveys the pointlessness of it all. These men cry not mainly because of a sense of indignation or sorrow but more out of sheer frustration. However, even despite these epiphanal moments of the human condition that are supposed to be self changing, the men really just want to get through the day and go home and continue there regular lives. Indeed, they do return home, unchanged, continuing their domestic routines, Slowly losing their soul. RECOMMEDED VIEWING.

Cinema has come a long way since "The Dirty Dozen". I think that this portrayal of the 1973 war in the Golan Heights is one of the first films to actually project an image of war as its naked ugly self. No inspirational film score, no inflated heroism. The emotions are of helplessness, confusion, fear, uncertainty. The images are damp, gray, green and mud. This film has been knocked for a lack of coherency, shallow dialogues, drawn out and monotonous scenes - BUT THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT THAT'S BEING MADE!!! The Yom Kippur War was anything but coherent for all sides - Israel, Syria, and Egypt. I think that anyone interested to experience the less glamorous and more frank side of war should see this film.

As a former IDF soldier I applaud this film for its wholly accurate depiction of a Yom Kippur war experience. I agree for the most part with Tsuyoshi's review above and his advice is good. For someone that is interested immersing themselves in the experience of war without any Hollywood glamour this film does a splendid job. The scenes like getting stuck in the Golan mud while trying to carry a stretcher convey both the pain of training (what most of a soldier's experience is really about) and the frustration of war. Looking for more action? Not in this film, there is a reason that in the military that the old saying goes: "hurry up and wait".

I have often had friends that ask 'what was life like in the army?' and this film is a very good answer to that. I would gladly watch the film again with friends and recommend the film highly to those who understand what it is meant to be.

Other Israeli films in the same genre about war: "Beaufort" 2007 and "Ricochets" 1986 (no longer in circulation)

This is a powerful film. There are no other epithets that describe it. Gitai is able to draw us into teh conflict from the very first shots that capture the desolation of three long refugee camps along a deserted road. The excellent photography of Renato Berta is very effective and matches the director's intent. The realism of war is interpreted in all its crudeness and, at the same time, with desperate humanity. The story leaves no space to memory and focuses on human suffering, the rescue operations and the aid provided to the wounded. The article also poses the question as to what constitutes moral cinema. The answer, is suggested, is the film "Kippur". The realism of the screenplay renders with uncanny clarity the horror and the absurdity of any war. This point of view, Amos Gitai's point of view is valid well beyond the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Gitai does not blame one or the other side, but he takes the audience at the epicenter of the chaos that is a war against men - regardless of colour, nation or creed

Not recommended for those who are used to fast moving action films. Kippur is slow moving and the moments of utter silence create a certain unease at the beginning, but little by little, one is totally taken into the movie. The rythm of the movie gives the viewer the time to feel the horror of war, although no war scenes appear. It pitcures normal people with normal concerns in the midst of war.

I was looking forward to an interesting movie about the Yom Kippur war, and I mean interesting and not necessarily a thriller with lots of blood. This movie managed to be utterly boring. There is no story line, no climax, you learn nothing about the Yom Kippur war, its context or anything relating to it, and not really anything about the characters either. The shots are endless, especially of the same tracks and the same tanks again and again and the same injured soldiers. The only thing I learned was that a lot of stretchers were used during the war. The content of this movie was just about enough for a short film, especially if you take out the long sex scenes in the beginning and end, which were apparently only there to add time and to maybe wake you up at the end. Somehow Gitai seems to have thought an art movie means an utterly pretentious, boring movie. What an utter disappointment!

this film will not appeal to those with short attention spans
or other cognitive disorders brought about by a steady diet of hollywood "in your face" editing.

gitai gives the viewer room to think and reflect on what is
being presented (war and more war)---instead of thrusting the material in the viewer's face or manipulating the viewer's emotions through the usual bag of tricks. in fact- some of the
characters are not actors, but play themselves as they are
in "real life".

the long takes without dialogue are reminiscent of angelopoulos, oliveira and tarkovsky- which may explain why they are not well received by the tv-addicted or cinematically uneducated.

if you enjoyed "kippur"- try gitai's other film titled "kadosh".

Not at all political, highly personal view of war. Deliberately plotless, yet a lot worth seeing. The alterating crisis and tedium, as well as the weird proximity of war and civilian life in Israel is captured well. The sporatic, often aimless dialogue feels true. But the film is undermined by poor attention to the framing of many scenes, especially background images behind the main actors (at times tanks move back and forth in the without purpose, and medical extras stand around stretchers and casualties without adequate driection to give the scene either dynamism or realism). Worthy, but flawed.