Speaking to a packed theater at the MASA MAP Beaufort film screening, author and screenwriter Ron Leshem described his former level of disconnect to the experience of Israeli soldiers serving on the front lines during the first Lebanon War, a realization that compelled him to write Beaufort.  The novel rocked Israeli society and was made into a feature film, a feat believed impossible in a country that traditionally keeps contemporary war out of its entertainment medium. The film Beaufort, in which Leshem collaborated on the screenplay with director Joseph Ceder, has received

international acclaim, winning the Director’s prize at the Berlin International Film Festival as well as a 2008 Academy Award nomination for best Foreign Film.

One of the foundation stones to Israel's sense of identity has been the youth in uniform.  The army experience, compulsory for women and men, has traditionally been the common denominator of Israeli society, surpassing demography, socio-economic status, ethnic origin and, when considering the Druze, religious affiliation and race.   

At the Beaufort film screening Leshem revealed to the international crowd in attendance the extent he believes this common identity has been unraveling in Israel.  The people on the front lines “are not the people from Tel Aviv,” Leshem explained, but rather people from the lower socio-economic strata of society or from the National Religious ideology, a reality that begs the questions, "who are we sending to die for us?"

Both the novel and the film confront the emerging detachment of the citizen from the soldier.  While the novel delves deeper into the emotional complexities of a soldier fighting without the support of his society, the film works to visually isolate the soldier in a reality Israeli society neither supports nor understands.

The entirety of the film takes place on the Beaufort Mountain in southern Lebanon.  The only characters appearing on screen are those that come to the base or seen through outpost’s television.  There are no women and no shots of the outside world.  There are also no shots of the enemy.  However, their presence is constantly felt through rocket bombardments, road mines, and a mounting death toll. 

Trapped within the walls of their base, fearful of their situation, angry at their lack of support and traumatized by their loss, the soldiers are left to defend their position and stay alive, while continuously frustrated by an unseen enemy and an internal dialogue nagging their brains demanding a rationalization for being there.  Despite the brutality of the situation, however, there is a consistent pull to the mountain and to the experience, a theme present throughout the film but explored more fully in the novel.  “Many of them miss the war, but they don’t talk about that,” Leshem explains. “You will always hear some kind of yearning” for the experience. 

The origins of Leshem’s novel begin in Gaza, at the outbreak of the first Intifada just after the IDF withdrew from Lebanon.  Sent to cover the violence in Gaza for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Leshem overheard an Israeli soldier remarking to his friend that Gaza was, “fucking Saigon.”  The comment caught Leshem’s attention, and he pursued the soldier, eventually documenting his experience and outlook through a series of interviews and a deepening relationship. “He was angry at me,” Leshem recounts, “me being a guy from Tel Aviv.  What made him so angry was that at the end of the day if he got killed, [I] wouldn’t even know.”  This resentment towards the detachment of Israeli society to the realities in Lebanon, expressed by this soldier and others, came to be one of the primary themes permeating Leshem's novel. 

“I won’t interest the bloke in that café on Sheinkin Street, when I’m blown to pieces of few minutes from now.  He’ll keep sipping from his mug, probably at the very moment it happens he’ll tell a joke and everyone will pretend to laugh and then he’ll go home and screw his girlfriend, he won’t even turn on the news, and as far has he is concerned, nothing will have happened this evening.” (11)

Although the film does present a societal detachment from the military realities, the message Director Joseph Ceder presents is slightly more cynical of the IDF itself. Whereas Leshem devoted much of the novel to social themes with a technique he describes as “charming realism,” Ceder consciously never blinked from the violence and brutality of the situation on Beaufort, as well as never seeking to romanticize what Leshem calls the, “simplicity of death.” “The film,” Leshem stated, “turned out to be a totally different piece than I wrote, but I like that”

Ceder’s critique of the IDF stirred commentary and tension in Israel as the film hit theaters.  The fact that over 60% of the actors who auditioned for the movie had opted out of military service altogether ignited a campaign for the film’s boycott.  In a recent New York Times article, Ceder countered such criticism with the remark, “The way I see it, there is more than one way to contribute to deterring our enemies, other than with tanks.”

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The film Beaufort was released March 8, 2007 and has won four awards from the Israeli Film Academy as well as the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival for best Director. The novel Beaufort, first published in Israel in 2005, won Israel’s top Literary prize in 2006 as well as the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for Military Literature.  The English translation was published in 2007.  Beaufort was Leshem’s first novel.  More information on MASA MAP’s Film Evening MASA MAP Event Calendar