Amos Gitai’s Rumination on Conflict Lacks Specificity : ‘Why War’ Review

The veteran Israeli filmmaker hits a wall while lamenting the broad concept of war.

“Why War” is both the title of Amos Gitai‘s latest and a question that has long been on the director’s mind — one he has tried to answer with works like “A Letter to a Friend in Gaza” and “West of the Jordan River.” However, this seemingly direct confrontation of the query takes a roundabout path, resulting in a movie about helplessness, frustration and intellectual debate in the face of military conflict. It is based, in part, on written correspondences between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and takes an experimental, meta-fictional form, though its images can’t help but feel trepidatious, if not entirely without purpose.

Through staged scenes of battles from antiquity (one of which appears to be the First Jewish-Roman War), Gitai paves a fiery path for his rumination, though his methodology quickly proves too broad for his subject matter. Early in its runtime, the film features images from the heart of Israel, of art installations about the events of October 7, and numerous posters of Israeli hostages, alongside the slogan most associated with them: “Bring them home.” Any subsequent inquiry into war, therefore, stems from this contemporary context, but the approach “Why War” takes is often too vague for a film that demands specificity. (Without shots of the aforementioned installations, it would be a different work entirely).

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Before diving headfirst into re-enactments of Freud and Einstein’s letters, Gitai follows actor Irène Jacob (star of his most recent movie, the absurdist drama “Shikun“) as she pens a letter of her own, to the filmmaker himself. She writes (and speaks, in voiceover) of the paralysis she feels experiencing war as a series of images on television, a framing device seemingly geared towards explaining Gitai’s own perspective on recent events — one that cannot, by nature, feel truly involved.

Whether this is mere contextualization or preemptive apology, it ends up feeling distinctly like the latter once the movie truly begins. On the one hand, Mathieu Amalric plays a thoughtful, pens -

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ive Freud with the kind of magnetism that makes one yearn for an Amalric-fronted biopic. On the other, Micha Lescot shows up as Einstein in a flimsy wig and a smug expression, puffing a pipe while staring at the camera, as though he has just walked off the set of “Epic Rap Battles of History.” He doesn’t speak for much of the film. Granted, his ill-fitting casting is eventually explained, but this choice still proves immensely distracting for such serious subject matter.

Unfortunately, the material itself never approaches the topic of war beyond the abstract. The letters in question are far more general and philosophical than a film about Israel and Palestine demands. While Gitai’s endless closeups on Amalric make for a great performance showcase, Freud’s words about common instincts and cultural interests hold weight only as theoretical solutions to theoretical problems. Ironically, treating notion of war with such a broad brush — rather than wrestling with real specifics — works only to flatten asymmetrical conflicts, like those which have been seen in the wake of October 7. (Significantly more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis.) Gitai, though he may wish for a pause button to the conflict at large, unwittingly decontextualizes war itself, as a matter of psychological impulse, and of male aggression, rather than complex geographical, historical and ideological dynamics.

As the film goes on, its lament about the general concept of war takes numerous forms, from Jacob participating in interpretive dance, to filmed clips of staged musical performances set against a video installation, à la Gitai’s staged version of “A Letter to a Friend in Gaza.” If helplessness in the face of war is the movie’s default point of view, then it seldom struggles against those constraints, resulting in a work that says little with its words and images.

‘Why War’ Review: Amos Gitai’s Rumination on Conflict Lacks Specificity

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Aug. 31, 2024. 87 MIN.

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