On DVD: Beaufort

A shell-pocked outpost in Lebanon is the setting for an Oscar-nominated army drama. Paul Martin hunkers down and learns some tough lessons about the siege mentality.

Beaufort - the structure that lends its name to this absorbing film from director Joseph Cedar - is a fortress situated in the south of Lebanon, which was awarded its moniker when Crusader forces seized it back in 1139. Positioned at a lofty vantage point atop a looming mountain, the fortress was perceived as a great strategic asset, with it subsequently changing occupiers on numerous occasions over the centuries, before the PLO took up residence there in 1976. The Israeli Defense Force took control of Beaufort during the First Lebanon War of 1982, and there IDF troops were to remain for a further eighteen years, under intermittent but indefatigable fire from Hezbollah forces. Then in 2000 the Ehud Barak administration decided to effect a troop withdrawal from the Israeli Security Zone in southern Lebanon, leading to Beaufort's relinquishment after nearly two decades. And it is those last days in which Cedar's movie is set, with Beaufort's final battalion of Israeli custodians experiencing mixed emotions as they contemplate going home.

Beaufort is a fictionalised version of real events, based on a tome by writer Ron Leshem (who also penned the movie's script in conjunction with Cedar). The central figure is Liraz (Oshri Cohen), the young commander of Beaufort with a seemingly unshakeable faith in the importance to the Israeli army holding of on to the outpost, and whose ever-serious demeanour renders him an alienating figure to many of his charges. The film commences with the arrival of bomb-disposal man Ziv (Ohad Knoller), sent to clear a device from the supply road, and who lost his uncle in the 1982 battle to take Beaufort. What ensues is less a cause and effect narrative, and more a filmic encapsulation of life at the encampment, as long stretches of do-nothing tedium are cruelly punctuated with individual tragedies which must necessarily be swiftly forgotten, but which leave a cumulative scarring on the souls of those who remain.

As the drama in Beaufort unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that the young men who act as sentinels of the fortress have been charged with maintaining an Israeli propaganda asset, rather than defending something that has any physical worth. The base has no real merit, being nothing except arrayed concrete on the surface and a labyrinth of dimly-lit metal tunnels underground. As one sentry wryly puts it to Ziv, the troops are there to “guard the mountain, so it doesn't escape.” With Liraz' men unable to return fire on their Hezbollah attackers, their task is merely to try and stay alive, and allow the Israeli government to continue to hold Beaufort up as a signpost of defiance against their regional foes. The consequent frustration of these soldiers at the unsatisfying nature of their assignation positively bristles from an ensemble cast who are er, uniformly excellent.

This is however a war movie at heart, and as such there is no skimping on the clichés of the genre. For example, Oshri (Eli Eltonyo) should really have seen enough army flicks to know that excitedly counting down the days till you are reunited with your sweetheart in New Jersey is probably the surest way to get an enemy rocket fired straight up your jacksie. Similarly, as soon as Shpitzer (Arthur Perzev) demonstrates his flair for music, to great acclaim from his comrades in arms, you cannot help but feel he is operating on borrowed time. Yet while certain instances in Beaufort are musty with the whiff of over-familiarity, they still do not feel in any way empty or false; the writing and the performances ensuring that the underlying emotions are given powerful elucidation.

Cedar's film was up for the Best Foreign Language Film statuette at the Academy Awards two years ago (it eventually missed out to The Counterfeiters, another fact-based period piece), and it is certainly a well-made and engrossing affair. And there is flirtation too with real film-making virtuosity in Beaufort's best sequence, when a suited-up Ziv goes to deal with the explosive device in the road, under the barest of cover from enemy fire. It is a slow-burning, tension-soaked scene, with Cedar quietly guiding it towards a staggering conclusion that is emblematic of the artistic skill with which his movie has been constructed.

Rating on a scale of 5 systems for measuring wind speed via observation of prevailing nautical conditions: 4

Release date: Out now
Directed by: Joseph Cedar
Screenplay by: Ron Leshem, Joseph Cedar
Starring: Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran, Ohad Knoller, Eli Eltonyo
Cert: 15
Running time: 127 minutes