{"id":1392,"date":"2009-09-11T10:35:35","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T17:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2010-03-07T00:20:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T07:20:43","slug":"samuel-maoz-talks-about-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=1392","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Maoz Talks about “Lebanon”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shlomo Porath<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent many years in the dark; the trauma of Lebanon haunted me. Once someone asked me what is this trauma \u2013 this shell-shock \u2013 do you have nightmares? I wish it was as simple as having nightmares. I didn\u2019t do much in that time,\u201d said filmmaker Samuel Maoz, whose first feature film, Lebanon<\/a>, was more than 25 years in the making. Shlomo Porat spoke to Maoz just before the film made its world premiere September 8th, in the 66th Venice Film Festival<\/a>, with Toronto International Film Festival as the next stop in a long list of festivals that includes: New York Film Festival, London Film Festival, Pusan International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival and the Cologne Kunst Film Biennale. <\/p>\n

On being the third in a series of Israeli films relating to the war in Lebanon (Beaufort (2007) and Waltz with Bashir (2008):<\/p>\n

Samuel Maoz: It\u2019s my bad luck that it seems as though mine is the third film to come out on the topic, but I began making it before Beaufort came out. But I didn\u2019t have enough money. I had money from the Israeli Film Fund and I had to either make the movie or return the money. I understood that if I start making it, I\u2019ll take the train to a point where it can\u2019t be stopped because too much money has already been invested in the movie. So I decided that I\u2019ll do it, but without making any compromises. Even if I can only shoot part of the movie, I\u2019ll shoot as much as I can.<\/p>\n

It was important to me to begin with the outside shots because actually there wasn\u2019t a set; there was the outdoor and the tank. I wanted to go from zero to 100 \u2013 in terms of the actors and crew to get them into a kind of drive. I was afraid that in the tank the whole thing would be drier in terms of the shooting. Outdoors it\u2019s more of a party.<\/p>\n

Shlomo Porat: I spoke to Ariel Roshko (the production designer) and he said that you filmed it in Tel Aviv, and had to hide the Azrieli Towers so they wouldn\u2019t appear in the shots.<\/p>\n

SM: We didn\u2019t leave Tel Aviv. We shot in the shuk (the outdoor market) and near Igal Alon Street in an abandoned warehouse. The farthest we travelled was to the studio in Neve Ilan (Gimel Gimel Studios).<\/p>\n

SP: How much studio time as compared to outdoor?<\/p>\n

SM: 8 outdoor days and 20 studio days.<\/p>\n

SP: How did you shoot it? Did you have different models or moving walls where you could change the angles each time?<\/p>\n

SM: It [the tank] was modular, but it was made from the real thing. I was invited to Rotterdam with the script and participated in a panel and presented the film. The movie is the tank itself but it also needs to go up and down and turn; it needs to be very dynamic. Someone from Cinecitt\u00e0 Studios said, \u201cListen we have a hydraulic platform, they use it in Hollywood and on helicopters, but it will be good for your needs. Because I love your script I\u2019ll give you a special price \u2013 $250,000 including an operator. I said ok. In the end Ariel Roshko bought a cart for 1,200 NIS.<\/p>\n

Usually, in a normal situation, three or four people work on a shot: camera, assistant, grip. In this movie we had one shot \u2013 it was a crazy fast ride \u2013 where 14 people did the shot. Itai Tiran [Assi in the film] worked the clap, Oshri Cohen [Herzl in the film] when he was out of the frame would throw in shells and boxes, one person made smoke, another dripped oil. You talk about the way it looks\u2026its very labor intensive.<\/p>\n

I believe that the more prepared you are when you come to shoot; your ability to improvise grows. Of course its different for each individual, I\u2019m talking about myself. I prepare. I prepared a 500 page notebook describing how this movie was going to be shot, detailed from which lens we would use to every drop of oil. That\u2019s the beauty of it because when you arrive so prepared, you have no problem going wild when you begin work. The most beautiful things came not from what I had planned but from what I improvised, but I know that I couldn\u2019t have arrived at that place\u2026I need to go to Haifa through Beer Sheva.<\/p>\n

Writing the script was a very visual process. Hebrew can be a very poor language. You have \u201cBeautiful\u201d [yafe] \u201cAmazing\u201d [madhim] and \u201cEnchanting\u201d [maksim] and that\u2019s about it. English has a much larger vocabulary. I use images when I write. For example, he had a smile like a poker player who is holding 4 aces. It\u2019s a very specific smile, rather than say he had a mischievous smile or something like that. It helps the actors as well.<\/p>\n

I would go to locations \u2013you know when you write a script and you find a location, it\u2019s not exactly what you saw in your imagination. What you imagined would be a perfect amorphous reality. I used some photos that I found on the internet of bombed Beirut.
\nI would go to locations and take pictures from every possible angle then work with them on photoshop and write about them.<\/p>\n

SP: You had investors on the film from Germany and France. Did they try to impose any kind of agenda on the film?<\/p>\n

SM: On the contrary. I participated in the pitching session in Jerusalem two years ago. It was very emotional and it was very strong. People clapped and said it was a great pitch when I finished speaking. Michel Reilhac (from Arte France) seemed unconvinced \u2013 he said, \u201cIt\u2019s a strong story, but your pitching was so emotional. You seemed to be too much into it, I\u2019m afraid it will turn into one of those movies where it\u2019s me and my experience and losing proportions.\u201d I told him that I am coming to it [the film] after 25 years based on a decision that I am not going to do this project until the moment when I can do it as a director who is making a movie and looking at the actors as portraying a character, which implies disconnecting emotionally. So he said, \u201cPerhaps you think that you have already disconnected emotionally, but in your pitching it didn\u2019t look that way and I wish you good luck.\u201d That was the end of the conversation and he didn\u2019t take the movie.<\/p>\n

Then I was invited to that panel in Rotterdam with the script and at that point Reilhac said, \u201cNow I\u2019ll read the script.\u201d A week later I received a phone call from him and ever since then he\u2019s been very supportive of the movie and has been behind us all the way.<\/p>\n

\"Scene<\/a>
Scene from "Lebanon" a film by Samuel Maoz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SP: The movie is bookended by an evocative image. Was this image something concrete that you saw or was it an image that came to you while writing?<\/p>\n

SM: If you\u2019re asking me whether there was a particular field of sunflowers in Lebanon \u2013 no. It was mostly based on an intuitive feeling. That shot was a picnic, it\u2019s unbelievable. I went with Giora [the cinematographer] and Arik [the editor] came to help us. We met at 9:00 in the morning and drove to Beit Jubrin. Giora who is a kibbutznik and drives to the kibbutz every day had been telling us \u2018the sunflowers are starting to bend their heads, now is the time\u2019 because when they are completely bowed down you don\u2019t really have a sunflower anymore, and I wanted them half-way, like that.<\/p>\n

We drove there with a camera and shot them in three or four compositions and there was a wind. Once we had the wind we were happy and by 11:00 we were already drinking coffee at Arik\u2019s house in the moshav.<\/p>\n

SP: Was the tank in the shot real, or added digitially?<\/p>\n

SM: The tank was planted in the frame. The production company suggested I talk to the IDF speaker about a tank, I said there\u2019s no point. When I came to the IDF speaker they practically threw me down the stairs. There was such a scene there\u2026the speaker is a woman; she sat there without saying a word. Standing next to her was the lieutenant who said, \u201cAll right, let\u2019s begin: the movie contains 11 incidents of \u201ctalking back\u201d to a commander, even refusing to obey an order. I will begin to read them in order of severity: \u201con my dick you and your orders.\u201d[a literal translation of Hebrew slang used in the film]
\nThen there was the kiss of death \u2013 soldiers looking at a naked woman! [there was a poster of a woman in the tank] But on the panel of her computer she had a large sticker of Oshri Cohen [who plays the rebellious soldier Herzl in the film]. They didn\u2019t give me anything.<\/p>\n

In terms of guns, there are companies that supply movies and I could manage but I didn\u2019t have a tank. And then I found a tank. One day an art person arrives and says I found a tank in the Golan Heights.<\/p>\n

SP: Was it the right model? The one you needed?<\/p>\n

SM: No, but don\u2019t tell anyone. It was a commando production. We set out in two vehicles and set up opposite the tank. Quickly set up a green screen behind the tank, an actor went in, we shot. We used it later for the scene in the field of sunflowers. For the set, they simply found somewhere else a tank that had been bombed.<\/p>\n

SP: Oh, so it really was a bombed out tank. Didn\u2019t they [IDF] have a problem\u2026one of the first scenes you see Jamil with the\u2026I don\u2019t know whether I should call it a coup de grace?<\/p>\n

SM: Actually, this interests me as a test case, because as far as I am concerned, what I intended is that it not be a political movie.<\/p>\n

SP: I agree, it does not come off as a political movie.<\/p>\n

SM: Because if you ask why does he [Jamil] shoot in that scene. Some people will say it\u2019s an execution – just like that, without batting an eye, and some will say \u2013 it\u2019s out of compassion. But if you ask me: why does he shoot him \u2013 it\u2019s because he is shouting now and he is making noise and Jamil is responding to the situation and something has gone wrong, a mistake has been made. You need to solve it and move on.<\/p>\n

SP: So he doesn\u2019t even think on that level at that moment.<\/p>\n

SM: Of course. Listen \u2026I\u2019ll let you ask your own questions but I can tell you about the trauma of war, what it means to kill people\u2026how you act in that situation the metamorphosis that you undergo from a boy to \u2026for me the movie is about the emotional wound.<\/p>\n

\"Samuel<\/a>
Samuel Maoz 1982<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SP: I was not a combat soldier but I felt that in that one scene you showed all the humanity that exists in the inhumanity of war. You showed all the problems \u2013 the immediate problems, the human problems. It amazed me. That\u2019s what drew me into the movie.<\/p>\n

SM: After all, you can say \u2013 there were pressures on you, you were actually a pawn in someone\u2019s chess game. But when you are a link, the last link in the chain of death, the moment arrives when it\u2019s your fingers and that is the moment, nothing can help you here, that is the moment when you take responsibility. And it haunts you, that moment; it\u2019s a fraction of a second. It\u2019s not like confronting a dilemma where you can say \u2013 all right, I understand the dilemma I\u2019ll get back to you tomorrow and let you know what I decide. You hesitate for a second and a paratrooper is killed.<\/p>\n

I knew that first scene needs to be simple; I can\u2019t become too complicated, in terms of narrative it needs to be simple, like a mathematical equation. I thought about it a lot, every nuance. I\u2019ll give you an example, even the moment when he sees the truck, there is this moment when he makes a gesture with his hand \u2013 so there is this moment where if someone didn\u2019t understand yet, when you know that he also is responsible for what happens now because there was this moment when he could have understood that this is actually a civilian, that maybe it doesn\u2019t look exactly like the moment before.<\/p>\n

SP: Weren\u2019t you afraid to make such a minimalist narrative?<\/p>\n

SM: What you\u2019re saying is strange to me. It\u2019s not that I wasn\u2019t afraid of it, it\u2019s even more extreme than that \u2026as far as I am concerned there wasn\u2019t any other way to make this movie. Now when I think of it \u2013 it\u2019s like making a movie in a living room, making an entire movie in the living room of an apartment. Still, a person can get up, walk from one place to another, stand on his head, and lay on the floor. Here \u2013 the actor can\u2019t move. I was very aware that I don\u2019t have a long shot. That is why I invented new definitions: from the torso up is my long shot, the face is my medium and this is my close up.<\/p>\n

The movie is just about the first day of the war, but I was in one of the first tanks that entered Beirut. There was this story, the war had been going on and people in Israel were dissatisfied and saying what is happening so someone had an ingenious idea, a great trick \u2013 let\u2019s infiltrate three tanks to Beirut, place them opposite the palace, the media will all arrive in the morning and take pictures. We\u2019ll gain five days and they\u2019ll wait for us in the western quarter. And the Phalangists led us, a group of paratroopers, and three tanks. We had to maintain a certain distance between the tanks. At some point they gave us the wrong direction and we were abandoned in the industrial area of Beirut. There the Phalangists sent us directly into an area where the Syrians parked their tanks.<\/p>\n

There were 11 Syrian tanks there and to this day I don\u2019t know how I came out of there alive. There was an amazing scene, I went in there and I guess the Syrians were asleep; they weren\u2019t on guard because no one expected Zahal to enter the industrial zone of Beirut, so they woke up surprised and started shooting at us from all directions. They tried to climb on the tank and we drove forward and crashed into tanks. Then we heard the voice of a pilot on the radio who said \u201cI am an F15 pilot. I\u2019m above you. As soon as you are out of the parking area let me know that you are out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our commander said, \u201cI don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d The pilot said, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what to do, the best is just drive forward, full gas. We drove forward between two tanks and pushed them somehow aside and at some point we started to drive and drive until we heard his voice again and he said are you out and we said yes, and he bombed everything.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is that when we were looking for locations for the movie I made on the Batsheva Dance Company, Giora [Bejach] was the cinematographer there too, and we were talking about Lebanon and Giora said, \u201cListen, the strangest thing happened to me in Lebanon. I was an intelligence officer in the air force and one day a tank with four idiots in it drove into a Syrian tank parking lot and I had to send out a plane and he was about to bomb the place and I said you can\u2019t there\u2019s a tank there. Then he made radio contact \u2026how things are connected, suddenly he\u2019s filming my movie.<\/p>\n

SP: It\u2019s an amazing story.<\/p>\n

SM: Always. [wanted to tell the story] But every time I tried to write it \u2026the first thing that would come back to me is the smell. For some reason the memory of the smell is stronger than the visual memory. And then I already knew that after the smell, would come all the images\u2026how can I tell you, after years of passivity and explosive bursts of rage then you learn to identify the dangerous moment and get away in time and not get into it. So I left it. And one day when I was really depressed, I didn\u2019t know how I\u2019d get out of it, and then I thought: if that\u2019s my situation then I have nothing to lose, and I can go there without fear. I\u2019m waiting, muscles tense, and I wait for the smell, one, two days and it doesn\u2019t come. And the images don\u2019t come. And I am making an effort to bring them back.<\/p>\n

I can remember, but I begin to understand that the person I am writing about is no longer me. I felt euphoric, like a trembling missile, and it came pouring out. Then I became very practical and went into the site of the Israeli Film Fund and saw that the deadline for applications was in three weeks. I had no day or night, didn\u2019t eat or sleep. Once I wrote about 8 pages, 7 \u00bd in one day.<\/p>\n

SP: Did you intend to write only about the first day?<\/p>\n

SM: It\u2019s interesting \u2026A few years ago I read about an American study that answered so many of my questions \u2013why my memories of the first day are so strong and my memories of the other days are so disjointed, or why I feel that the boy who was there was not me\u2013 It\u2019s a simple study. It\u2019s statistical, but its essence is psychological. What it says is the chances of a soldier dying on the first day of the war are the highest; it goes down by 50% the next day. By the third day he only has a ten percent chance of dying and after the fourth day, if he dies it\u2019s because a bomb landed on his head, something that could not have been avoided. Why does this happen?<\/p>\n

War needs you, it is based on the assumption, not the assumption \u2013 the complete confidence that you will be able to kill people \u2013 otherwise it doesn\u2019t work. It won\u2019t take the chance that you will kill people because of an ideal, or because someone gave you an order. Its sounds easy, but if I tell you now take this person on the other side and kill them\u2014no punishment, nothing, its fine \u2013 it could be someone you hate \u2013 you won\u2019t kill him. Because you need to be a bit of a psychopath in order to kill another human being.<\/p>\n

War is based on our human instinct for survival. A palpable danger of death is something that you feel in every cell in your body. At first when you enter that reality, a reality that is so extreme compared to what you are familiar with in which the most violent action up to that point had been to kill a cockroach. You are in total shock \u2013 your reactions are slow, you respond slowly. I remember that I stood outside just as we went in, in the morning and suddenly there was a small noise and I didn\u2019t understand and I looked, I looked down I saw the backpack starting to move and I saw shaving cream flying. I remember looking at it and it took me a moment to understand that they must be shooting at me. I was lucky.
\nYou need to decide \u2013 they tell you, every movement or sound from a balcony \u2013 you fire. Now, in some of the instances someone is aiming a missile at you and in some of the instances it\u2019s a family on the balcony, and sometimes the person who is aiming a missile at you holds a little girl in front of him so that you will think that it is a family. If you hesitate for a moment, someone shoots you \u2013 you\u2019re dead, the story\u2019s over. Or someone else is dead.<\/p>\n

The instinct to survive, passion, and violence \u2013 those are our basic instincts. Your sense of taste begins to disappear; you eat anything that is available. Your hearing and vision become more acute, you can sleep just three hours a night and you are not tired. Every moral system is neutralized. I can compare it to a kind of drug. After the third or fourth day you no longer care. It\u2019s the body\u2019s defense mechanism for the soul. The boy who was there was not me.<\/p>\n

It makes me laugh when people ask whether Zahal is a moral army. The option to be moral in a war does not exist. It exists, but the formula is very simple: If you want to protect your soldiers, you cannot be moral. If you choose to act morally, more of your soldiers will die. The movie is called Lebanon, but it is relevant to any war. That is why the name of the movie is a mistake. I know. [laughter]<\/p>\n

SP: I didn\u2019t say that. Are you content with the movie?<\/p>\n

SM: I have to say that I am. And that\u2019s the greatest gift of all. This movie is like chamber music, it\u2019s a chamber music piece.<\/p>\n

SP: Yes, but it’s universal.<\/p>\n

SM: The closer you are to the actor and the person and go inward\u2026your ability, the less you extend your reach, the more you purify yourself I realized that I need to insist here \u2013 you\u2019ll see the war the way they do, you\u2019ll hear it the way they do I exaggerated a bit \u2013 not in the events, but in the intensity. But I had to.<\/p>\n

SP: you talk about the movie as if you just went out and made it with a few of your friends, but it looks amazing.<\/p>\n

SM: I did make it with a few of my friends.<\/p>\n

SP: Any ideas for future projects?<\/p>\n

SM: I want to make up for the time that was lost. I still have a lot of truth within me to express. Lebanon is our [Israel\u2019s] Vietnam, not the Yom Kippur War. We train for tanks against tanks. There, you are suddenly in the middle of a city and your enemy is wearing jeans.<\/p>\n

The interview was translated and edited by Ayelet Dekel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shlomo Porath \u201cI spent many years in the dark; the trauma of Lebanon haunted me. Once someone asked me what is this trauma \u2013 this shell-shock \u2013 do you have nightmares? I wish it was as simple as having nightmares. I didn\u2019t do much in that time,\u201d said filmmaker Samuel Maoz, whose first feature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}