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KIPPUR Send This Review to a Friend
With all of the violence that has been going on between Israelis and Palestinians, "Kippur," one of the selections at the New York Film Festival, is particularly timely. Its anti-war message looms even larger than when the film was conceived and shot.
Director Amos Gitai dramatizes battleground horrors in the 1973 Yom Kippur war as he follows medics in their assigned tasks of rescuing the wounded while under fire themselves. The personal stories are minimal; the film is confined mostly to the details of the mission.
The trouble is that after a while the point has been made effectively and, despite the good intentions, the film becomes tiresome repetition of piled on violence and trauma. It proves over and over again that war is hell, but doesn't go much beyond the cinema verite.
Gitai frames the film with a very pretentious beginning and a matching finale consisting of the protagonist and his woman smearing themselves in paint and rolling around in it, which doesn't seem to have much point other than to be artsy. A Kino International release.
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